The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2)

by A. J. Scudiere

  Had she been stabbed already?

  Donovan couldn’t see. Sarah stood in the way, and she slowly turned around, hands raised, blank look on her face. “It’s too late.”

  She was walking forward, brazen as you please, the walk pegging her as a seasoned criminal. Normal people tried not to get shot, but criminals understood they could walk a good distance if they did so calmly. Sarah took full advantage.

  As she moved away, Donovan saw that Mrs. Deen did indeed have a knife in her gut. Her hands wrapped around the handle, holding it carefully in place. She knew not to pull the weapon out. While that was usually sound medical advice, it was all wrong in this case.

  Looking to Eleri for confirmation, he saw her nod.

  This was that kind of knife.

  With Eleri nodding at him even as she turned to follow Sarah, he lunged at Mrs. Deen.

  His fingers closed over hers, fresh blood making his grasp slide, nerves making him sweat. He smelled the wound and a tinge of something odd that might be the ricin in her system. There was an overlay of the metal of the knife, mixing with the blood and starting to react. The knife was not entirely plastic. Metal shards were the worst.

  He looked Mrs. Deen in the eye, unsure whether she was the good guy or the bad guy in this situation. “Let go. Let me.”

  She stared at him, wide eyed, in medical shock now, well beyond the surprise of the attack. Donovan didn’t have time to comfort her. He was standing so close, he’d at least be injured if the blade blew up. So he yanked it out and held it back.

  As soon as he did, he felt the piece removed from his grasp. Holding the knife was just as dangerous as bleeding out. As he moved to try to take care of two deadly happenings at once, Walter yelled at him.

  “You can’t just pull it out!” She had field medic training, but she didn’t understand about this.

  He only yelled back. “I’m a fucking doctor.” He was getting ready to tell her more, when he heard footsteps. Fast and heavy. It sounded like Sarah was getting away. They could shoot her, but they needed her alive. And they needed Mrs. Deen alive, too, but she was bleeding out through a gut wound and a ricin attack she was never meant to survive.

  “Stop!” Cooper Rollins yelled at Sarah, but the footsteps didn’t stop, even when he added “FBI” illegally to the end of his command. Donovan scrambled his hands over Mrs. Deen’s wound, trying to stuff her shirt into the hole to stem the blood.

  Behind him, he heard Eleri yelling to Walter, who must still be holding the knife.

  “Throw it!” The desperation in the tone told him. The knife was too close. If Walter was holding it, she’d die.

  He heard a soft thud, a grunt, and Eleri yelling at a pitch that nearly broke her voice, “Get down!”

  He hunched over Mrs. Deen out of innate reaction rather than anything else and Eleri had barely finished the words when he heard Sarah’s voice start to say, “What?”

  But she didn’t finish her words either. It sounded like she smacked into the door as she spoke, and then the noise hit Donovan’s ears just before he saw the red mist.

  37

  Eleri did not want to open her eyes. One side of her was coated with what remained of Sarah—a woman whose last name she didn’t know. And it was her own fault.

  She’d seen Walter holding a knife she knew had been activated and would detonate any second. She didn’t want Walter near it when that happened. So she’d yelled, “Throw it.”

  What Eleri hadn’t anticipated was that Walter had serious knife throwing skills. She also failed to anticipate that the words “Throw it” would get interpreted to mean “at the woman attempting to run out the front door.”

  Reaching up, Eleri wiped some of what remained of Sarah from the side of her face onto her jacket sleeve. Not much disgusted her, but this did. It didn’t matter; there was suddenly so much to be done. She only wished she’d not been so shocked by seeing the blade fly right into Sarah’s exposed right flank as she reached for the doorknob. The woman had seemed shocked that her own weapon had been used against her, or maybe she was just registering pain. But the irony wasn’t lost on Eleri.

  Now Eleri turned to check on Walter, who still looked stunned.

  Her face was worse than Eleri’s, as was Cooper’s. They heard the yell to get down, but had no idea that Sarah was going to vaporize. They couldn’t have possibly reacted fast enough.

  There was nothing Eleri could do about that. There hadn’t been time to explain.

  Walter and Cooper were both using whatever dry fabric they could find to clean their faces. Eleri lamented the lost evidence, but clear faces and open eyes were important. It appeared the danger had passed, but looks could be deceiving. If Sarah had been right, then Mrs. Deen was up to her eyeballs in something.

  Eleri looked to find Donovan still tending the older woman. She’d hadn’t bled out yet, so Eleri took stock.

  Mrs. Deen was down and possibly mortally wounded, but she had a doctor over her. Donovan appeared to have taken very little of the mist and mostly on his back. He was partially tucked around the corner away from the front door, which helped. Still, she checked on him.

  “How you doing, Donovan?” It was a simple question, but they were in earshot of a suspect, even if she was bleeding out.

  “I’m solid. Grab me a towel?”

  She handed him the one remaining clean dish towel. She was turning to check on her consultants when Cooper spoke up.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  Eleri checked his eyes, and apparently not very subtly.

  “I’m still here. Not freaking out.” He stared back at her, letting her know he was exactly as he said.

  Given that, Eleri didn’t give him time to re-ask his question. Cooper Rollins was not a man you wanted to piss off. “That was the way the cells have been killing their targets.”

  She walked cautiously around what remained of Sarah, trying not to mess up much. At least there was still plenty for DNA collection and the fact was there were four witnesses. She sighed. “That knife was an explosive. They’ve been stabbing people and blowing them up from the inside.”

  “That’s why Heath yanked it.” Cooper was nodding as he took it all in. “Counterintuitive. Most people know not to remove an embedded object.” He paused a moment, thinking. “Son of a bitch.”

  Walter joined in then as the implications dawned. “You didn’t want me to get her.”

  “Nah. Not really.” Eleri said. She couldn’t lie to Walter, even to soothe her feelings. She didn’t think Walter would stand for it anyway. With her, it was all about respect, and Eleri owed it. “I meant ‘throw it far away.’ I had no clue you had the skills to do that.”

  “I wouldn’t have.” Her eyes weren’t focused here and Eleri was beginning to wonder if the scene triggered the panic attacks that Walter had talked about in the car. She couldn’t tell.

  This time, when Walter spoke, she turned and looked at Eleri. “It felt heavy. A bit off balance for a throw. But I misunderstood.” Her face fell. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Breathing in, Eleri realized it was up to her. She was commander here on the scene. “I’m calling it in.”

  There was shit to do, and she did it. She called for an ambulance first and got an ETA which she relayed to Donovan and then passed along an update on Mrs. Deen’s condition. She called the Bureau, activating a crime scene team.

  Moving Walter and Cooper a few steps back, she had them sit, side by side on the steps that headed upstairs from the far side of the living room. She pulled her tiny camera and took preliminary scene pictures, including shots of the soles of all their shoes.

  She was making Walter take evidentiary photos of her own sneaker bottoms—red with the mist she’d nearly slipped in on the hardwood floor—and finally got a chance to speak.

  “I would have loved to keep Sarah alive.” She’d never bullshit Walter. “But, that knife was going to blow. And you kept her from getting away. What you did was a perfectl
y reasonable interpretation of my command. The fact is, Sarah came here to kill Mrs. Reed. She also killed Mrs. Loreen Sullivan the same way—ricin poisoning, then attacking her with a knife when she was weak. You ended a murderer before she could get away. That’s a fine result in my book.”

  As Eleri spoke, she watched Cooper turn sheet white.

  “Mrs. Loreen Sullivan?”

  “You knew her.” Eleri knew this. He must not have tracked it when she mentioned “Mrs. Sullivan” earlier. Now that he had her first and last names, he’d put it together.

  “She and Mr. Sullivan took in Kellen.” He looked from Walter back to Eleri, paying no attention to Donovan and the still-bleeding Mrs. Deen. “Ken took me to them for two different Christmases before I met Alyssa. They made me welcome during a family holiday.”

  He looked heartbroken, a condition Eleri never thought she’d see on Cooper Rollins’ face. Then it got worse.

  “I want to say I hope Sarah there died in extreme pain, but that would mean Mrs. Sullivan did, too.” Then, as she watched, another piece clicked in. “That’s how Dr. Gardiner died. The knife. I’d always thought that scene was very, very odd. . . . Son of a bitch. Did she kill Gardiner, too?”

  Eleri shook her head, wondering how far into the details he’d want her to go. She couldn’t tell him about Aziza.

  Turning away from him to thwart his inquiry into things she couldn’t answer, Eleri went to the duffel bag. Using a pencil she pulled from a drawer, she pushed the floppy handles out of the way. They wouldn’t retain fingerprints, but the rough fabric would possibly hold scrapes of DNA, so she didn’t want to touch anything.

  Eleri didn’t think they’d need it to identify Sarah, but maybe to prove that she’d carried the duffel in. She used the tip of the pencil to hook the zipper and a covered finger to hold the end open as she peeked inside.

  “Rollins.” She called out when she got a look. “Can you come over here carefully and take a look at these?”

  He did so without disturbing anything. Walter had chosen well; Rollins knew his shit. Eleri prayed to any god she could think of that she wasn’t putting her faith and a bushel of evidence directly into the wrong hands. “What can you tell me about these?”

  They were guns. They were long range, another disturbing development. But they were in pieces, and there was more than one. Eleri recognized scopes and stands, barrels and bolts, but she couldn’t tell what specific guns they belonged to without looking up the parts.

  Squatting, Cooper kept his hands back out of the way, not even dropping DNA into the bag. He kept his head out of her light and moved around her. She liked him more and more.

  She shouldn’t.

  After a moment’s assessment, he spoke. “You have an M16 in there. One. Then you have two Mk 12 SPRs, looks like. There’s a modified scope for one. Do you need more?”

  “Who uses those?” She asked.

  “U.S. Army.” It was spoken as though she’d asked what frozen rain in flakes might be called. But it was another link, another step on the same path. The deaths were linked to U.S. Army munitions movements and now at least one cell was linked to that, too. The first set of movements was in Fallujah, the second now here on US soil.

  She asked another question. “Is there any legitimate way that she could have gotten her hands on these?”

  “Sure. You can buy that gun at any number of gun stores. Though there’s supposed to be a waiting period for that.” Then he pointed. “But that scope? That’s special issue. Armed Forces, Special Units only. They aren’t to be brought home with the soldiers either. They’re supposed to be accounted for. And the barrels, can you see that they’re modified for longer range?”

  Eleri shook her head ‘no,’ but Cooper didn’t seem to think less of her for it. “That’s also special issue and sometimes hard to get your hands on even in the service. She has two.”

  “So, not good?” Eleri clarified.

  “Definitely illegal,” Cooper confirmed, then he put his hands on his knees in a fluid movement that should have led to standing. Instead, his hand flew to her arm, his eyes to Walter’s. “We have company.”

  Eleri started looking around, trying to work her innate reaction and her brain at the same time. “Feebs?”

  “No. Definitely not.” Cooper strained his head slowly to his left to look out the window better. “He’s checking out the coupe.”

  Eleri did the same and nearly gasped. “I think that’s the man that bumped into me downtown.”

  But he was outside the window. She couldn’t pop up, run over. He looked around, then started coming up the walkway.

  The yards were small, the walkway measured in discrete feet. “Donovan!” she hissed, even though she turned her head to Walter. “There’s someone coming now. Keep her quiet.”

  Mrs. Deen hadn’t been noisy per se, but she’d made the occasional soft sigh, moan, or something that seemed like it might be a word.

  Eleri held her hand out to Cooper Rollins. “Do you have glasses?”

  “I have this.” Even as he said the words, the compact spyglass hit her palm. Eleri looked quickly and furtively out the window. He wasn’t the man who’d bumped into her, but he looked a lot like him.

  Mrs. Deen mumbled something about “my son” and Eleri was grateful to see Donovan’s hand slide up and hold the woman’s mouth closed. Unless she figured out there was someone to alert, she wouldn’t make enough noise to break the barrier of the door. Question was, did he have a key?

  She looked at Rollins and mouthed the word “locked?”

  He shook his head. They’d probably left the door as they’d found it, meaning Mrs. Deen had not locked herself and Sarah inside. Well, shit.

  They’d have to wait and see what the son did.

  Eleri’s muscles tensed as he knocked on the door, waited, and knocked again.

  When the doorknob slowly turned, she knew that he knew something was wrong. He’d seen the yellow coupe. If he knew who it belonged to, or even just knew that his mother was home sick today, he’d expect an answer to his knock.

  She drew her gun and saw, but didn’t hear a sound as Walter and Cooper did the same.

  Slowly the door eased open just a crack. In the dead silence of the house—broken only by the sound of traffic on the main street, of others in a busy city going about their daily lives—she heard him gasp.

  Eleri couldn’t see him, but she saw a shadow of him peeking into the front entry. He must have seen what was left of Sarah whatever-her-last-name-was. He closed the door quicker than he’d opened it. Though she’d thought he’d run, she was shocked to hear him insert a key and slide the deadbolt.

  He’d seen the slime and probably one of the few intact parts of Sarah that remained scattered through his mother’s living room. Instead of coming and checking on his mother, or even calling out, he’d closed and bolted the door!

  Breaking through her surprise, Cooper tapped her on the arm and motioned a question. “Do you want me to follow him?”

  “Yes!” she mouthed back and pointed to the back door. Then she pointed to Walter and motioned for her to go after Cooper, too. Two cars could follow far better than one. That was important since the man already knew something was wrong.

  As she watched him out at the sidewalk, the man pulled out another set of keys and opened the door to the yellow coupe that Sarah had driven here. Eleri frowned at the fact that he was now the third person—according to Cooper’s original story—who had keys to the car.

  The man checked the back seat, the trunk, and looked around a little more before seeming to swear to himself. Then he climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. By the time he’d pulled forward, both Cooper and Walter were out of sight and she was crouching in a kitchen with a bag of stolen guns, while her partner tried to save the life of an old woman who seemed to have it coming from all sides.

  Eleri found herself praying once again.

  She hoped the man got away before the Feebs and the
techs got here, because she wanted to know where the hell he was going.

  38

  Cooper entered the FBI Los Angeles branch office as a freshly clean man. There hadn’t been time to shower before he and Walter hit the cars and followed the yellow coupe.

  He’d just climbed into the driver’s seat, partly slimy, and done his best, trading off with the mini-SUV, hanging back, keeping the lines open with Walter. He was disturbed by how much fun it was. Lately, he had just enough money to pay his rent and eat; he’d been following Ken Kellen. Though he’d just watched a young woman blow up from the inside, he felt like a few more rusty bolts were rubbing off the red and breaking free.

  He wanted to feel bad for the Sarah woman, but he couldn’t. By her own words, she’d poisoned the other woman and showed up with assault rifles and plans to stab and bomb the woman. He’d already put her death aside.

  He was still on the fence about Mrs. Deen.

  She’d been steely to Sarah. Something in her voice made him think she knew exactly what Sarah was talking about. And if that was the case, if that man they’d followed might be her son, or even a friend of her son, then Cooper didn’t have a lot to spare for her, either.

  While he’d driven out, he’d prayed he didn’t get pulled over. He was wearing human remains, and was considered an active member of a Muslim terrorist cell. That would ruin everything.

  They managed to follow the yellow coupe to the end of the line. Hidden themselves, done some quick research and come back in. Walter had called in, and even gotten them permission to bathe. He’d wiped down the car, too, and added a towel that Walter provided from a nice—if nearly empty—apartment she’d gotten very recently. Now he came in through the front door, and the only human remains he had on him were in a plastic grocery bag where he’d wadded up the clothes and shoved them down in.