Cut to the Bone
Page 5
That wasn’t working, either.
“Think hard, Mrs. Reynolds,” Branch urged. Zabrina’s lime-green streaks hinted at a wild side, so he steered the conversation that way. “Did she have enemies? Owe someone money? Any arguments with her boyfriend? Or other friends? Did she use drugs-”
“No!” Cassie screamed, pummeling the bedspread till dust flew. “No, no, no! Zee was a good girl! She didn’t do anything like that!”
Branch waited out the cloudburst.
Finally, Cassie rubbed her glistening cheeks, turning the mascara into fingerpaint. “Our daughter was a dream come true, Captain,” she said. “It was hard for us to conceive. My mother had the same problem with me. But finally, it happened, and Zabrina was born.”
Her smile became wistful, Branch noted. Happier times.
“She was a kind, wonderful girl,” Cassie said. “I never had a lick of trouble with her, not even the mother-daughter fights you expect. We were very close.”
“Yet Zabrina lived here,” Branch pointed out. “Not in Milwaukee.”
“Her boyfriend landed a job in Naperville, so she decided to move,” Cassie said, with a little head bounce that said she hadn’t been exactly thrilled. “We offered to buy her a place near us so we could see her more. But she wanted her independence. You know, cut the apron strings.” Her eyes refilled, and she lifted Zabrina’s pillow to her face.
Branch saw that a lot with survivors - scent was such a powerful reminder of their loved ones. He let Cassie breathe awhile, then asked the next question.
“She took the spa job right after she moved in with Barry,” she said, lowering the pillow. “Only temporary, while she looked for something that paid better. But she grew to love it. She took a night job for extra money.”
“Doing what?”
“Waitressing, One of your downtown steakhouses.” She pursed her lips. “Or maybe it’s seafood? I forget.”
Branch made a note to track that down.
“I heard something you might like to know,” he said. “The ladies at the mud spa genuinely looked forward to seeing Zabrina walk in every morning.”
“Really?”
“That’s what they told me.”
Cassie glowed, straightened a little. “That’s wonderful to hear, Captain. You always like to believe people adore your children. And it proves what I’m saying - she wasn’t on some mobster’s hit list. She didn’t gamble, take drugs, cheat on Barry, or do those other horrible things you said. She was killed by some random nut.”
The precision of the knife work suggested otherwise, but he let Mrs. Reynolds hang onto that particular pillow as long as she could. She’d need it. “Why do you think that?” he encouraged. Half of what detectives found useful came from the informal rambles at the end.
“You see it all the time,” Cassie said. “The Amish school. Columbine. Post offices. The Middle East. Someone goes nuts, and innocent people die! In this case, my only child! My baby!” Her eyes leaked grief. “You see it all the time . . .”
“The poor dear,” Donna Chen said, delicate fingers fluttering against her linen blouse. “I pray she didn’t suffer.”
“No,” Emily said. “Zabrina died instantly. I know she didn’t feel a thing.”
“Oh, I’m so happy,” Donna said. She immediately flushed.
“It’s OK, Mrs. Chen. I know how you meant it.”
“Please, Detective, have a seat.”
Emily eased into the striped wingback. She declined the proffered lemonade - she was pounding down too much sugar today as it was. While Branch questioned Zabrina’s mom next door, a dozen task force members canvassed the condo complex, knocking on doors in search of leads. Emily drew the neighbor.
“So you’ve lived here a while?” she asked.
“Oh, gracious, many years. Nine at least,” Donna said.
Emily smiled to herself. That was a lifetime in Naperville. Unlike her old Chicago neighborhood, where your neighbors were your neighbors till you joined the great bowling league in the sky, the population here turned over every couple years from corporate upsizing, downsizing, re-orgs, and transfers. Moving vans were as every bit a symbol of this white-collar city as the Riverwalk.
“Zabrina moved in two years ago,” Donna continued. “She and Barry were ideal neighbors. Thoughtful and hardworking, always ready to lend a hand. My husband admired Barry’s ambition to succeed, and we girls got along famously.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, listen to me! I’m no girl anymore.”
“It doesn’t show,” Emily said.
“Thank you,” Donna said, touching Emily’s hand. “That’s sweet of you to say. It’s all because of this marvelous facial moisturizer I found . . .”
They chatted about that for a minute, then Donna started reminiscing about fun times with “Bee and Zee.” Emily took notes.
“So Zabrina had no enemies,” she said, wrapping up. “No one you can imagine killing her.”
“Not in a million years,” Donna declared. “Not that darling young woman.”
“How about her family? Did she ever mention any enemies they might have?”
“No,” Donna said, crossing one leg over the other. Emily envied their shapely slimness. “Zabrina invited us to dinner once when her parents and grandmother came to visit from Milwaukee.”
“Her dad’s mother?”
“Maternal grandmother,” Donna said.
Emily tried recalling the name from the rushed background reading she’d done before beginning the canvass. “Was that Myla?”
“Leila,” Donna corrected. “Leila Reynolds. She died just last year. Very classy, with perfect manners and an engaging spirit. Cassie and Zabrina clearly inherited those genes. The father was just as nice. He was senior vice president of a Chicago bank, but didn’t put on a single air. Believe me, Detective Thompson, those people have no enemies.”
Emily kept writing, not surprised at the response. Every single person they’d interviewed had nothing but good to say about-
“Not here, anyway,” Donna said.
8:47 p.m.
“The judge signed a no-knock warrant,” Annie radioed a low, crisp voice. “We go in unannounced and grab the target. Everyone copy?”
A dozen double-clicks from her SWAT entry officers confirmed they were primed.
“I’m moving to point.”
The point position, Emily knew, meant Annie would be the first cop through the door of the dilapidated house on Burlington Avenue, on Naperville’s Far East Side. First to know if Devlin Bloch would throw up his hands or toss a grenade. She leaned to Annie’s helmeted ear.
“You get killed,” she whispered, scared down to her boots that her best friend wouldn’t emerge from this whole, “I’ll quit buying you daiquiris.”
Annie grinned, slapped Emily’s raid jacket.
Then she pulled the Springfield Armory .45 XD Tactical from her thigh holster. She preferred a high-capacity handgun on point. It was handier in small spaces than shotgun or rifle, and its wide-body bullets dropped bad guys like anvils on Wile E. Coyote. She confirmed her chamber was loaded, and headed for the front door.
“Green light,” Annie grunted when she arrived. She loved point. The more danger, the more alive she felt. “Launch on my five-count. Five, four, three-”
“Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.”
The call from the spotter on Bloch’s front window meant the suspect was running.
“We’re blown. Assume he’s heading for weapons,” Annie radioed, signaling her demolitions expert. “Green light, repeat, green light. Take him.”
8:52 p.m.
Front, back, and garage doors disappeared. The demo man danced a one-second jig, then rushed to his secondary position. Black-clad SWATs tornadoed into the smoke, shouting, “Police! Search warrant! Don’t move! Don’t move!”
Emily gripped and released her thighs, praying nobody got hurt. Especially not Devlin Bloch, the multiple-felony ex-con who lived here.
Because he could be Zabrina’s killer.
Marty stared through binoculars. Branch monitored radio traffic. Nobody said a word. Emily couldn’t if she wanted - her throat was too constricted.
Four minutes later, a flash of blond ringlets appeared.
It was Annie, helmet off.
Everyone started breathing.
“He’s not here,” she radioed, her voice tight. “We looked everywhere, including attic and basement. Bloch’s gone. You guys can come in.”
Branch looked at Emily, she at Marty, and all three at Annie.
They walked inside, shaking their heads.
9:12 p.m.
“Your people were everywhere,” Branch said, facial scar jumping with his scowl. “How could Bloch just disappear?”
Annie’s counter-stare could melt titanium. “No idea,” she said. “Doesn’t seem possible.”
“Yet, he’s not here.”
“Think I don’t know that?” Annie snapped. Then, softer, “Sorry.”
Branch waved it off.
Emily left them to decide what came next.
She walked into the kitchen, wrinkling her nose at the stench. She went to the dented stove, turned off the gas under the skillet. Two walleye, so overdone they curled like Fritos.
As the bacon grease quit popping, she studied the small, cheerless room - white enameled sink, harvest-gold appliances, gouged linoleum in a shiny pink not found in nature, sheet-metal cabinets filthy with God-knows-what - and found herself agreeing with Annie. It simply wasn’t possible to slip past a dozen SWATs with nightscopes, thirty backup officers, and a snuffling pack of shepherds. This guy wasn’t Houdini, so where-
Creak.
She looked around but saw nothing. Probably the house settling. Her own did that constantly. Or her imagination was working overtime-
Creak.
Nope. It was both-ears real, and somewhere over her head.
She looked up.
There was a spidery crack in the middle of the grease-splotched ceiling, between two plastic “beams.” It was the length of a prone man, and the only one of surrounding dozens that opened and closed like fish gills.
Shifts in pressure from the other side.
Skin prickling, she eased her Glock from her hip holster and leaned toward the debating team in the living room.
“Hey, guys,” she said, keeping her voice la-di-da while putting a finger across her lips. “Bloch left us some walleye. You hungry?”
They trooped in, staring at Emily’s up-stretched arm.
“Guess we interrupted supper,” Annie said, spotting the fish-gilling. She pulled her gun from her holster. Marty and Branch followed suit.
“Yes,” Emily said. “It’s a shame he couldn’t join us.”
Branch squeezed Annie’s arm, pointing at the narrow hall to the bedrooms.
The location of the attic hatch.
Annie hand signaled her troopers to follow. Two grabbed stepladders. The rest checked their HKs, Benellis, and Arma-Lites.
“This guy’s gone,” Branch said, keeping up the patter. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Sounds good to me,” Marty replied. “You heading back to the office?”
“Home,” Branch said, loosing an exaggerated yawn. “I’ve been in these clothes all day. I’m starting to smell as bad as you.”
“Har-har,” Marty said.
A SWAT held up five fingers. Five seconds till Annie popped the hatch.
“This whole situation smells bad,” Emily said, locking her front sight on the crack. “I don’t know how Bloch did it, but he’s definitely disappeared. We need to analyze every-”
“Devlin Bloch! This is the Naperville Police! Do not move!”
It was Annie, her command bellow shaking the shingles.
“You’re in the attic, over the kitchen, under the insulation! SWAT officers with automatic weapons are aiming from below and all sides! If you move, they will open fire!”
Silence.
“You have five seconds to answer me, Devlin Bloch! If you remain silent, I’ll assume you’re armed, and you’ll be extracted the hard way! Five, four, three-”
“All right!” a voice shrieked. “I give up!”
“Do exactly what I say,” Annie said. “Do you understand?”
“Just don’t hurt me!”
“We won’t, as long as you follow my instructions.”
“I will!”
“On the count of three, get on your feet. Slowly. One, two, three.”
Sheetrock groaned. Ceiling crack widened. Grease peeled away like wet bandages.
Emily leaned into the living room. Annie and two other SWATs stood on ladders, wedged into the attic hole, checking out Bloch through nightscopes. Another SWAT readied a pole-mounted floodlight. Annie positioned it, pulled the scopes, mouthed, “Go.”
“Any weapons on you?” she said as 2 million candle-powers blasted the rafters.
“No.”
“Take off your shirt so I can see,” Annie said. “Turn all the way around.”
Thirty seconds passed.
“Now drop your pants. Turn all the way around.”
Thirty more seconds.
“Now your underwear. Turn all the way around.”
“That’s my dick in there, honey, not a-”
“Drop ‘em,” Annie said. “Now.”
“All right, all right,” Bloch grumbled.
Fifteen seconds.
“Pull up the Jockeys and walk toward the light. Slow and steady. If you reach for the insulation or make any other sudden moves, we will shoot you.”
“I don’t have any weapons. Honest. I didn’t do anything,” he whined.
“Sure, Dev, you’re hiding in this itchy mess for laughs,” Annie said. “Now walk.”
Bloch put one foot in front of the other, balancing on the ceiling joists. “OK, I’m taking the first step.”
“Not too fast,” Annie warned.
“Sure, Officer.”
“Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant, sure, absolutely, goin’ nice and slow. I’m taking the second step. Now the third. Now the fourth. Now the - yaaaaagh!”
Marty and Branch leaped out of the way as dirt, insulation, Sheetrock, wood chips, nails, shingles, Christmas decorations, TV antenna, shirt, pants, and Bloch blasted onto the floor.
Emily was too slow, and disappeared in the whiteout.
9:27 p.m.
“Quit fighting!” Emily roared as she grappled Bloch for control. It wasn’t easy. He was so sweaty from the 130-degree attic it was like wrestling a greased pig - grab, slip, smear, slide.
“Where are you? We can’t see through this dust!” Marty yelled.
“Under the sink!” she said, her head banging off the plywood door.
“Let go of me, ya psycho bitch!”
She drove an elbow into a particularly sensitive nerve.
“Ow! Police brutality!” Bloch hollered.
“Quit whining, you sissy,” she heard Marty say.
Hands poked in and hauled them apart. Annie pinned Bloch to the linoleum - raising another filthy cloud - and shackled him wrist and ankle. Another SWAT searched Bloch’s shoes, groin, and cheeks. “No weapons,” he reported.
“You surrender?” Marty said to the coughing, flattened form.
“Uhhhnnn,” Bloch said.
“Check him out,” Branch said.
Two Naperville Fire Department paramedics peered into his eyes and read his vitals.
“He’s fine,” they declared. “Just shaken up.”
“Me, too,” Branch said, slapping Sheetrock off his clothes. “You all right, Detective?”
“I’ll . . . be . . . fine,” Emily coughed.
Branch handed her his canteen, then nodded at the paramedics to check her, too.
“Lieutenant Bates,” he said at their thumbs-up, using her rank instead of “Annie” to avoid diminishing her to the suspect. “Make our guest comfortable so we can talk.”
Two SWATs grabbed Bloch at the armpits and dragged him to the
living room, Annie kicking a path through the trash. Branch followed with the others. Emily heard the couch groan, followed by Bloch’s explosive cursing at being gouged by a spring.
Annie ducked back in the kitchen.
“Banana,” she said.
“What?” Emily said.
“My daiquiris. Banana. With really expensive rum.”
Emily stuck her tongue out as Annie disappeared.
“You gotta wash out that plaster dust or it’ll scald your eyes,” Marty said, sticking his hand in the water stream to ensure it wasn’t too hot. “Don’t touch the sink, it’s full of boogers ‘n’ stuff.”
She turned her head sideways under the tap, let the water do its thing. It tasted like iron, stank of rotten eggs.
Marty’s cell phone rang.
“Martin Benedetti,” he said, moving her head around with his free hand to rinse off all the crumble. “How can I help you?”
Ten seconds later Emily’s head banged the side of the chipped enamel.
“Ow!” she said, grabbing her left ear. “Easy there, cowboy! What are you doing?”
He didn’t reply.
“What?” Emily said, pulling free and wiping her face to look at him. His face was stone, his eyes hooded, nostrils flared. He stared like his dead wife was oozing from the receiver. He mumbled that he was busy, and he’d call back later, then didn’t close the phone.
Alarmed, she grabbed his arm and shook him hard.
“Huh?” he said, snapping out of it.
“What’s wrong? Are you OK?”
His eyes were darting. His breathing was fast. His face was ashen, his lips tight.
“Yeah,” he said, recovering. “Fine.”
“Who was that on the phone?”
Several seconds passed. Each felt like a century.
“Snitch,” he muttered, thumbing the power button.
“Marty-”
“Snitch,” he repeated. “Causing a problem I’m gonna have to tend to.”
He’d never used his “back off” tone with her, and she felt her anger rise. She turned away and splashed handful after handful of water on her neck and collarbone.
“Did I get everything?” she asked, feeling it run down her chest.
“Oh, yeah,” Marty said, back to his normal good humor. “Pat you dry, Ossifer?”