Fatal Scandal: Book Eight of the Fatal Series

by Marie Force

“It’s Lori,” he said softly. “Someone killed her.”

  “What? When?”

  “We got the call early this morning,” Sam said.

  “Oh my God.” And then her face went slack with horror and understanding. “You aren’t here because you think he had something to do with it, are you? Because he didn’t! He was right here with us all night! I’ll make a statement. What do I have to do?”

  Gonzo rubbed his hand over her back. “Calm down, honey.”

  No doubt sensing their dismay, Alex toddled over to them and tugged on Christina’s pants. She bent to pick him up, wiping tears from her face as she did. “He had nothing to do with this, Sam. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Mama,” Alex said, tearing up.

  Christina held him close, encouraging him to snuggle into her embrace.

  Watching Christina with the baby gave Sam a pang of longing. She’d been trying to have a baby for most of her adult life with no luck, and when Alex had dropped into Gonzo’s life out of the blue she’d been filled with unreasonable jealousy.

  “Can we make a statement?” Christina switched into professional mode as the initial shock passed. “If we come out ahead of the story, then they can’t drag us through the mud.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend that,” Sam said. “Here’s the bottom line—you both have motive, and you’re each other’s alibi.”

  “How can you say that?” Christina asked angrily. “You’re our friend. You know us! You can’t honestly think we’d be capable of killing someone.”

  “Babe.” The calm tone of Gonzo’s voice belied the panic Sam still saw in his eyes as well as the grim set of his mouth. “Sam’s right. She’s playing devil’s advocate. It doesn’t matter what we know to be true. What matters is what everyone else will believe and say.”

  “There has to be something we can do. We never left this apartment from the time we got home from the grocery store yesterday afternoon.”

  “Does the building have security cameras?” Sam asked.

  “I think it does,” Gonzo said, brightening.

  “I’ll get a warrant.” Sam pulled her phone from her pocket and placed a call to Captain Malone, her mentor and boss.

  “Happy New Year,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I need a warrant,” Sam said without preamble.

  “For?”

  “The apartment building where Detective Sergeant Gonzales and his fiancée live with his son.” Sam gave him the address. “I need the security footage.”

  “Um, do you mind if I ask why?”

  “The mother of his son was found murdered this morning. We’re seeking to prove that neither he nor his fiancée left the house from the time they arrived home yesterday afternoon to the present time.”

  “Holy Christ,” Malone said in barely more than a whisper.

  “Warrant? Yes?”

  “Yeah, I’m on it. I’ll be back to you ASAP.”

  “Thanks. We haven’t told anyone who our vic is yet. I’d appreciate you keeping the lid on it until we figure out a plan.”

  “Done. Will you be at the noon meeting?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “See you then.”

  “What did he say?” Gonzo asked the second Sam ended the call.

  “He’s getting the warrant. Does the building have a super or a manager?”

  Gonzo nodded. “He’s on the first floor. A guy named Tony. I can’t remember his last name.”

  “He’s in 1A,” Christina added.

  “I’m going down to talk to him,” Sam said. “Sit tight and try not to worry. If you didn’t do anything, you have nothing to worry about.”

  “If?” Christina asked, incredulous. “You really don’t believe us when we say we had nothing to do with this, do you?”

  “I do believe you. But I need to prove that as fast as I possibly can so no one has a chance to ruin your lives with innuendo.”

  “Go ahead, Sam,” Gonzo said, sounding resigned. “We’ll stay here.”

  “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t take any calls. Don’t make any. Got me?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I got you.”

  She certainly didn’t have to tell him how important the next few hours would be to maintaining control of this situation. She went down the stairs to find the super, stopping short at the sight of several men working on something inside the main door. “Is one of you Tony?”

  “That’d be me,” a tall, muscular black man said. “What can I do for you?”

  Sam flashed her badge. “Lieutenant Holland, Metro PD.”

  “Ahhh, the VP’s wife,” Tony said, smiling. “We got a celebrity in our midst, fellas.”

  The men with him stopped what they were doing to take a good long look at her, which made her skin crawl. She hated when people brought up her personal life when she was on the job. Why did everyone have to make such a BFD out of who she was married to? What did it matter?

  “Right now I’m a cop, and I have questions,” she said brusquely.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “The building has security cameras?”

  He gestured to the other men. “It does. They’re fixing them as we speak. Why?”

  Sam’s stomach sank at that news. “How long have they been broken?”

  “Since about noon yesterday. I noticed it this morning. That one there?” He pointed to the camera that monitored the vestibule. “It was hanging from its wires when I came home from my girl’s place. I called these guys in and paid extra since it’s a holiday. We take security seriously around here.” He paused, glancing up the stairs. “One of your guys lives here.”

  “That’s right.” If she could get a look at who disabled the system, it might help. “I’ve requested a warrant for the security footage.”

  “How come?” he asked, suspicious now.

  “It’s part of an ongoing investigation. I’m not at liberty to discuss the details. Am I going to have to wait for the warrant to receive your cooperation or can you help me?”

  “I’m not really sure I’m allowed to just hand over the video. I’d need to check with my boss.”

  “Can you do that now?”

  “Sure.” He stepped into his apartment and closed the door behind him.

  “What happened to the cameras?” Sam asked the workers.

  “Someone unscrewed it from its anchor and left it to dangle,” one of them said. “The only footage you’re gonna get is of the floor.”

  And of course they’d had their hands all over it as they fixed it, wiping away any prints that might’ve been left behind. Sam felt increasingly queasy as the implications set in. Without the camera, they’d have no way to prove that Gonzo and Christina never left the building last night.

  Sam’s phone rang and she took the call from Freddie while she waited for Tony to return. “What’s up?”

  “Lindsey is about to transport the vic to the morgue. Crime Scene is here, and they’re looking for the okay to take the car back to the lab.”

  Stepping out of earshot of the workers, Sam said, “Let them take it. We need a thread to pull. I’ll take whatever I can get.”

  “You talked to him?”

  Sam appreciated that he didn’t name names. “Yeah, he’s shaken but adamant. Neither of them left the apartment from the time they got home from the grocery store yesterday afternoon.”

  “Good,” Freddie said with an audible sigh of relief. “That’s really good.”

  “Except we can’t prove it.” She told him about the disabled camera in the building’s vestibule.

  “Oh, crap. So what now?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m waiting to hear if the super is going to be able to get me the video they do have. If
we can get an image of someone disabling the camera, that would at least give us something to go on. Malone is getting a warrant, but I’ve asked the super to cooperate. He’s calling the building owner.”

  “Sam...”

  “I know. Believe me. I know.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Rip her life apart. Find me someone else who had motive, and do it as fast as you can. I want the whole squad on this one. Call everyone in, tell them the order is from me.”

  “Okay.” His relief at having something to do was conveyed with the single word. Gonzo was one of his closest friends, as well as his colleague, and he’d want to do anything he could to help him.

  “Work fast. This investigation will probably be taken out of our hands the minute the brass finds out who our vic is.”

  “Got it. I’m all over it.”

  “Keep me posted. I have a meeting with the chief at noon, and then I’ll find you.”

  “Assume it’s okay to share what we know so far with the rest of the squad?”

  “Yes.” Sam agreed reluctantly. The more people who knew, the more likely they were to have a leak, not that any of her people would breathe a word without her approval. Still, if she had her way, no one would know who their vic was until they’d found someone else who’d wanted her dead.

  Tony emerged from his apartment.

  “I’ve got to go. Talk to you shortly.” She closed the phone and returned it to her pocket. “What’s the verdict?”

  “He said to give you the video now, but he wants a copy of the warrant on file. Just in case.”

  Under normal circumstances, Sam would ask just in case of what. But these were not normal circumstances, and she’d take the cooperation where she could get it. “I’ll get it to you as soon as I have it.”

  “Come into the office.” He led her to the back of the building where a hole-in-the-wall served as the “office.” From a machine located in the back corner, he removed a CD that he placed into a case and handed over to her. “The last twenty-four hours,” he said, as he placed a new recordable CD into the machine.

  “Would you mind signing something to indicate that you turned it over to me?”

  “Um, sure, I guess.”

  “I’m not going to haul your ass into court or anything.”

  “So you say now.”

  Sam shrugged to concede the point. For all she knew, her entire case could hinge on him, and she had no right making promises she might not be able to keep. From her back pocket she pulled out the notebook she carried with her at all times and scratched out a handwritten chain-of-custody note that she asked him to sign. “Print your name and phone number under your signature and date it for me if you would.”

  He did as she asked and handed the notebook back to her. “Is your guy upstairs in trouble?”

  “I don’t think so.” She stashed the notebook back in her pocket. “Thanks for your help.”

  Tony handed her his business card. “Send me that warrant when you have it. Email is on the card.”

  “I will. Thanks again.”

  “I like him,” Tony said. “He’s a good guy and a great father to that little boy.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Sam left the office and went back upstairs to speak to Gonzo.

  He must’ve heard her coming, because the door flew open. “What the hell took so long?”

  “Good news, bad news. Which do you want first?”

  His jaw clenched. “Bad.”

  Sam would’ve made the same choice in his situation. “Someone disabled the security camera yesterday.”

  “Fuck,” he said in a low growl. “So what’s the good news?”

  “The super gave me the video.” She held up the CD. “We might be able to see who did it.”

  “But there’s no proof I never left the building last night except for my word and Christina’s.”

  “At the moment, no.” Before he could flip out, she added, “We’re on it. Freddie and the rest of the squad are ripping up the rest of her life. If there’s someone else with motive, we’ll find them.”

  “And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Any second now it’s going to get out that she’s dead, and the media will be on me like white on rice.”

  “Which is why you’re getting out of here while the getting is still good. Go to your parents’ place or to Christina’s family. Go somewhere else until this dies down.”

  “And that won’t look like I’m running away?”

  “It’s a holiday, for Christ’s sake. People have plans on holidays. Go have dinner with your parents and act like everything is normal. If you stay here, you’re going to get stuck here when the story hits the news.”

  “My parents invited us home for the weekend, but we wanted to spend our anniversary alone,” he said grimly. “I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d gone.”

  “I wish you had too.”

  Chapter Five

  Gonzo went into the bedroom he shared with Christina and began throwing clothes into a duffel bag he’d pulled from under the bed. He’d heard the saying “coming out of your skin” throughout his life, but he’d never experienced the sensation himself until now. He literally felt like he was going to implode.

  “Tommy.” The sound of his name coming from the woman he loved had him spinning around to face her. “Take a minute. Try to calm down.”

  “Where’s Alex?”

  “I put him down for a nap.”

  “We don’t have time for a nap.”

  She came to him, resting her hands on his chest where she could no doubt feel his heart racing. “Breathe.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Try. For me.”

  He drew in a rattling deep breath and released it.

  “Do it again.”

  “Chris—”

  “Do it again.”

  Resigned, he did as she asked.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t kill Lori.”

  “Everyone will think I did.”

  “Let them think what they will. We know the truth. We know it, Tommy.”

  “I wanted to.”

  “You wanted to what?”

  “Kill her. When I found out she had her lawyers looking into me, investigating me, looking for something she could use against me. Then when she discovered my connection to Morton and went to the media with it, I wanted to kill her.”

  “Thinking that doesn’t make you a murderer.”

  “I told Sam, last night when she called... I told her I wanted to wrap my hands around Lori’s neck and squeeze the life out of her.”

  Christina gasped. “You said that out loud? To Sam?”

  “Yeah.” A wave of nausea had him swallowing repeatedly. “I was blowing off steam. How could I know that someone was going to actually do that to her?”

  “Oh my God, Tommy. No wonder she came here thinking it was possible.”

  “She knows I didn’t actually do it, Christina! You know I didn’t!”

  “What if she tells someone you said that?”

  “She won’t.”

  “How do you know that for sure?”

  “I know it. I know her. She’s not going to tell anyone.”

  “If it’s her ass in the sling, she’ll protect herself before she’ll protect you.”

  He shook his head. “If you think that, you don’t know her at all. She always protects her team before herself. Always. I’m not worried about her telling anyone. She’s one of the few people in this world I trust completely.” He kissed her forehead and held her close for a minute he didn’t have to spare. “We gotta get out of here. Sam’s right about what’ll happen when they release Lori’s name to the media.”

  Her hands tremb
led as she gathered her hair into a ponytail. He hated that he’d caused her such distress. “We’ll be okay, babe,” he said with more confidence than he had. “As long as we stick together, it’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll pack for Alex.” She turned and left the room, crossing the hall to the baby’s room.

  Gonzo sat on the bed and dropped his head into his hands. How in the hell had everything gotten so fucked up so fast? He should’ve disclosed the connection to Judge Morton. He knew that. But he’d been so desperate to gain custody of Alex he’d kept his mouth shut, taking any advantage he could get. And now it had blown up in his face in every possible way.

  Lori was dead. Jesus. After all she’d done to clean up her life in the last year, who would want to kill her? Was it someone from her past life as an addict? Had she met someone new and ended up in an abusive relationship? It was time to stop being freaked out and start acting like the detective he was.

  His phone rang and he withdrew it from his pocket. He didn’t recognize the Virginia number, but he took the call anyway, despite the pang of fear that struck him at the possibility of more bad news. “Gonzales.”

  “It’s Leon Morton.”

  Gonzo automatically sat up straighter. “Oh, Your Honor.”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you on a holiday.”

  He didn’t mention that he’d already been thoroughly disturbed. “No problem.”

  “I wanted to get in touch to apologize.” The judge’s speech was halting, as if he were pained. “I hate that this has happened, that you’re in such a tough spot.”

  He had no idea how tough that spot had become overnight. “Thank you, sir, but it’s not your fault. I should’ve said something.”

  “One of us should have. I was naïve to think it wouldn’t come out.”

  “As was I,” Gonzo said.

  “I wouldn’t change a thing about the outcome. Custody was granted to the right parent.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “As you can imagine, the scrutiny has been damaging. I’ve decided to retire to prevent it from going any further.”

  Gonzo felt sick again. With Morton out of the picture, all the scrutiny would be on him, which it would be anyway now that Lori was dead. “That’s probably for the best.”