by Marie Force
“I hear ya, babe, but I’ve got to run. Committee meeting in ten.”
“Talk to you later.”
“Be careful out there.”
“Always am.” Sam pulled into the parking lot at the Capitol Cleaning Services’ office and cut the engine.
“Good idea on the wedding planner,” Freddie said.
“I’m glad you approve. I have another brilliant idea I wanted to run by you.”
“And what’s that?”
“Have a dinner party for your mother and Elin. Give them a chance to spend time together in a relaxed setting.”
“Are you really helping me with this problem when I’ve caused such a huge problem for you?”
“How do you figure? What problem did you cause for me?”
“Hello? Gibson? I can’t freaking believe he might get sprung.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Gonzo—it’s not your fault. I was aware of what you were doing, my dad and Malone were aware of it. None of us stopped you.”
“We should’ve waited for the warrant.”
“Maybe so, but you had good reason to believe he had bomb-making supplies in there. I can’t say I would’ve waited either.”
“Sam, if he gets out—”
She held up her hand to stop him. “If he gets out, I’ll deal with it then. I don’t have to deal with it now.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his expression rife with regret and dismay. “I feel so awful about this. I wanted to nail him so badly.”
“We all did. So let’s talk about this dinner party you’re going to have.”
She watched him make an attempt to rally past his worries about Gibson getting sprung. “I thought you didn’t approve of her any more than my mother does.”
“I don’t disapprove of her. I just wonder if she’s right for you.”
“But you’re still offering me advice?”
“You say she is what you want. I’m trying to respect that.” Sam got out of the car. “Take or leave the dinner idea.”
“It’s not a bad idea.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“We’re in the middle of a case. When do you propose I have this dinner?”
“Today’s Monday,” Sam said, thinking it out. “Aim for Friday. We should have this wrapped up by then.”
He followed her into the office building. “And if we don’t?”
“Then I’ll still give you the night off.”
“And the night before to get ready?”
Sam scowled at him. “The night before too.”
“In that case, I accept your idea and the time off.”
“How did that just backfire on me?” Sam asked.
Freddie laughed. “I’ve learned from the best.”
In JoAnn Smithson’s outer office, Sam and Freddie found the older woman huddled with several colleagues. They were all in tears.
“Oh,” Mrs. Smithson said when she saw them. “Detectives! Someone is killing my employees! I don’t understand.”
“Try to calm down, Mrs. Smithson,” Sam said. “We’re doing everything we can to find the person who killed them.” Leading her away from the other women, Sam said, “I need a list of all your employees—their names, addresses, immigration status and anything else about them you can tell us that might be relevant.”
“I can’t give you personal information about my employees.”
“Do you want it on your conscience when another of them ends up dead?”
Mrs. Smithson wiped tears from her cheeks. “Of course not.”
“Then cooperate with our investigation so we can make sure no one else gets hurt.”
“I’ll need a few minutes to print the list for you.”
“We’ll wait.”
She scurried off.
“I was thinking,” Freddie said, “that we might also want to match up that list to the offices they cleaned and see if there are any patterns.”
“That’s good thinking. Tell Mrs. Smithson to add that to the info she’s getting for us.”
“You got it, boss.”
Since she had a few minutes to kill, Sam called Lindsey. “What’ve you got, Doc?”
“Another pregnant victim.”
“You don’t say.”
“Fifteen weeks.”
“Jesus. What the hell is going on here?”
“I have no idea,” Lindsey said. “But I have full confidence that you’ll figure it out.”
“What else did you find?”
“Semen from only one man this time. You know, it occurs to me that this guy must be one arrogant SOB.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Indulge me for a minute here.”
Sam glanced over at the office full of women hard at work on her request. Freddie was overseeing them. “I’ve got a minute.”
“So if I’m a guy who’s going to rape and murder women, I think I’d take the time to suit up so I wouldn’t leave my calling card behind. My guess is we’re looking for someone who never thinks for one second that he’s ever going to get caught. Like he’s above such menial things such as criminal justice.”
“It’s a good theory,” Sam acknowledged. “What I need from you now is confirmation that the DNA from Maria matches guy number two from Regina.”
“Running it now. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know for sure.”
“Great, thanks.” Sam ended the call as Freddie rejoined her with the list she’d requested from Mrs. Smithson. “Let’s stop at City Hall and figure out who Regina was married to. After we talk to him, we’ll start with the immigrants and go from there. For whatever reason, he’s targeting them.”
“I’m with you, boss.”
Sam waited impatiently for the City Hall clerk to pull Regina’s marriage license. “You’d think they’d have all this crap on computers by now,” she muttered to Freddie.
“You’d think.”
The clerk returned a few minutes later, carrying a binder. “Here we go.” She put the book down on the counter and turned it so Sam and Freddie could read the copy of the license.
“Seamus O’Grady,” Freddie said as he wrote down the name.
“Call it in. Let’s see if he’s in the system.” While he was on the phone, they returned to the car.
“Got a hit,” he said. “A B&E charge from four years ago. He’s on probation.”
“Finally, a break,” Sam said. A call to O’Grady’s probation officer yielded his place of business, a restaurant on Massachusetts Avenue. “Let’s go.”
They double-parked outside the restaurant and showed their badges inside. One of the waitresses pointed to the kitchen where they found Seamus working the grill. Medium height and build, he had red hair and blue eyes.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said when they flashed their badges. “What now? I talked to my PO yesterday. Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”
“When was the last time you saw Regina?” Sam asked.
“Who?”
“Your ex-wife, asshole.”
“Shit, that bitch?” As he spoke, he flipped burgers and sautéed onions. “Been more than a year since I laid eyes on her. Biggest mistake I ever made. All she wanted from me was a green card. Totally played me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the second she got it she was out the door. I thought she was home visiting her mother until I got served with divorce papers. Too bad for her that she set off INS alarms when she filed for divorce.”
“They rescinded the green card?”
He nodded. “She was able to get a work visa, but that was temporary.”
“You never saw her again?”
“Nope. She didn’t need me anymore, and I certainly had nothing to say to her.”
“How long were you married?”
“About fifteen months all told. Together about ten of them.”
“All that time, you had no inkling that she was playing you?” Freddie asked.
“I made the mistake of falling f
or her.” For a moment, he seemed lost in his memories, but then he seemed to remember the hurt. “What’s this all about? Is she in some kind of trouble? Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“She was killed Saturday night,” Sam said.
He froze mid-burger-flip. “Killed? What happened?”
“She was murdered in her apartment.”
“God, I can’t believe that.”
“Where were you Saturday night?”
His eyes bugged. “You don’t think…I hated her for what she did to me, but I’d never hurt her.”
“Where were you?”
“Right here. Two to midnight.”
“You didn’t leave at all.”
“Not until the end of my shift.”
“And someone here can attest to that?”
“Sure, the manager. He’s out front.”
After confirming Seamus’ alibi, Sam and Freddie left the restaurant.
“Another dead end,” she said.
Gonzo knocked on the door of the apartment upstairs from Maria’s and waited impatiently. He’d told Sam that his personal crisis wouldn’t affect his work, but that was proving much easier said than done. His body hummed with tension while he waited to hear something—anything—from Andy.
The door opened, and a middle-aged woman greeted him and his badge with a grunt. “This about Maria?” she asked.
“Detective Gonzales, Metro Police. May I have a moment of your time?”
She gave him a good once-over before admitting him into her apartment.
“Do you mind if I ask your name?”
“Debbie Hopkins.”
“Have you lived here long?”
“Six years.”
“What about Maria?”
“Coupla years, I guess. I didn’t know her very well.”
“If you could tell me anything you did know about her, that would help.”
“She never had much to say but wasn’t unfriendly. Just quiet.”
“Was she seeing anyone?”
“Not that I ever noticed, but she wasn’t around much. She worked a lot.”
“Did she work for just the cleaning service?”
“I don’t know. It seemed that she worked every night. I heard her shower go on in the mornings because the pipes would clang.”
Gonzo’s cell phone rang. “Excuse me. I have to take this.”
She gestured for him to proceed.
His heart stuttered when he saw Lori’s number on the caller ID. “Hello?”
“You had to send fucking social workers over here? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Wait a minute—”
“No, you wait a minute. I’m sorry I ever called you. You can keep your money and your social workers and your DNA tests. Just stay the fuck away from us.”
“I’m not staying away from my son, Lori. I don’t care about the money or anything else. I want my kid.”
“Then I’ll see you in court, because you’re not getting anywhere near my son if I have anything to say about it!”
Before he could form an answer to that, the line went dead. His hands shook as he returned the phone to his pocket. He took a moment to collect himself before he turned back to finish the interview. “Sorry about the interruption,” he said, forcing a calm tone to his voice when he wanted to shriek with frustration. Withdrawing his card from his pocket, he handed it to Debbie. “If you think of anything else that might be helpful to the investigation, please give me a call.”
“You might want to talk to Mrs. Ellison in 4B. I think they were friendly.”
“Thank you,” Gonzo said, grateful to leave the airless apartment.
Once outside, he sat on the stoop, taking deep breaths of cool fresh air. When he managed to calm down, he reached for his phone again to call Andy.
The moment the lawyer came on the line, Gonzo said, “We’ve got a problem.”
Sam knocked on the door of Selina Rameriz’s apartment. They had turned the non-immigrant portion of the employee list over to McBride and Tyrone. “Miss Rameriz,” Sam called when she knocked. “Metro Police. We need to speak to you about Regina and Maria.”
“I have nothing to say,” came a small voice from inside the apartment. Her English was smooth but accented. Mrs. Smithson had told them Selina was Columbian.
“Miss Rameriz, please open the door. We just want to talk to you. You’re not in any trouble.”
“Show your badges.”
Sam and Freddie held them up to the peephole.
Another minute passed before they heard the sound of locks being disengaged. The door opened to reveal a tiny young woman with dark hair and skin. She wrapped her arms around herself protectively. “What do you want?” Her eyes, which were rimmed with red, darted between them and then past them to the hallway.
“Have you been threatened, Miss Rameriz?” Sam asked.
She shook her head. “Someone is killing the people I work with. I’m frightened.”
“Did you know of anyone that either of them was involved with who might’ve wanted to harm them?”
Again, she shook her head.
“Did you spend time with either of them away from work?”
“No.”
“Can you tell us anything about who some of their other friends might’ve been? Any men they were seeing?”
“No, I’m sorry. I know none of that.”
Sam glanced at Freddie.
He handed Selina his card. “If you think of anything that might be helpful to the investigation or if you feel threatened in any way, please call me.”
She took the card, shut the door and engaged a series of locks. “The poor girl is terrified,” Freddie said once they were outside.
“I can’t help but think she knows more than she’s saying.”
“I agree. If she barely knew them, why did she look like she’d been crying all night?”
“Good point. Let’s keep her on our list to talk to again if we don’t get anywhere with the others. Maybe if we take her downtown we’ll get somewhere with her. Who’s next?”
Chapter 12
After interviewing five other Capitol Cleaning Services employees with similar results, Sam and Freddie returned to HQ at the end of their shift. Frustrated by the stonewalling from the women they’d spoken to, Sam gathered the other detectives working the case into the conference room for updates.
“Someone please tell me you have something we can work with,” Sam said. “This case is starting to piss me off.”
“I found one thing kind of interesting,” Jeannie McBride said.
“Where’d you come from?” Sam asked the third-shift detective. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
Jeannie flashed a sheepish grin. “Couldn’t sleep so I came back to work.”
“Hear that boys?” Sam said. “Look at that dedication.” Enjoying the dirty looks from the male detectives and a bright smile from Jeannie, Sam waved at her to proceed.
“I dug a little deeper on the financials for Regina and Maria. Both recently wired large sums of money to their families at home. Maria sent seventy-five hundred and Regina five thousand.”
Sam released a low whistle. “Where do cleaning ladies making seventeen bucks an hour get that kind of money?”
“They had something going on the side—drugs, gambling, prostitution,” Freddie said. “Something that pays big.”
“Would they take a chance like that when they were desperately trying to stay in this country?” Gonzo asked. “They get caught and they’re looking at automatic deportation.”
“They take the chance if they—and their families—desperately needed the money,” Jeannie said.
“And the babies are insurance policies to keep them here if all else fails,” Sam said, hearing the click of pieces coming together. “I’d really like to know who fathered Maria’s baby.”
“Her neighbor, Mrs. Ellison, was friendly with Maria,” Gonzo reported. “But she said she never saw her with a man or heard her talk about be
ing involved with one.”
“Check her travel status,” Sam said to Cruz. “See if she’s been back home recently. The father could be someone there. Follow up with the family to see if she had a significant other there who might be the father.”
Cruz nodded and made a note of her instructions.
“I’d also like to know from both families where they were told the money came from. They’ll be lies, but I want to know how they explained away that kind of money.”
Freddie added that to his list.
“Did we get anywhere with matching them up with the offices they cleaned?” Sam asked.
“They both worked in the Hart Building,” Detective Arnold reported. “In addition to Lightfeather, Regina cleaned Ackerman’s and Cook’s offices.”
“Ahh, our old friend Senator Cook,” Sam said, glancing at Freddie. Thanks to some inflammatory statements the senior senator from Virginia made to Nick about Julian Sinclair, Sam and Freddie had interviewed Cook after the Supreme Court nominee had been murdered. To say that Cook had been less than hospitable would be putting it mildly.
“Maria cleaned Lewis’s, Cappuano’s, Trent’s and Stenhouse’s,” Arnold continued, casting a nervous glance her way as he mumbled Nick’s name.
“Another blast from the past,” Sam said. Senate Majority Leader William Stenhouse was a bitter enemy of former Senator Graham O’Connor, John O’Connor’s father. Sam had interviewed Stenhouse during the investigation into John O’Connor’s murder, and like his colleague Cook, Stenhouse had been indignant and outraged by the implication that he might’ve had something to do with a murder. “Very interesting. In the interest of full disclosure, Nick mentioned that he knew Maria and that she cleaned his offices.”
Her comment was met with muttered acknowledgments. She hated when her two worlds collided this way.
“I want someone on Selina for a day or so,” Sam decided. “She was hiding something today when we talked to her. I want to know what it is.”
“Tyrone and I will take the first shift on her tonight,” Jeannie said.
“Excellent,” Sam said. “Have patrol show their photos around at the local shops, markets, restaurants again. Let’s find some of their other acquaintances. Get me some threads to pull.”
“You got it,” Jeannie said.
