His phone vibrated in his pocket.
“Rothstein.”
“Sammy, it’s Vinnie.”
“Go,” said Sammy. Vinnie Greco, second lead detective of the bureau.
“We got a possible witness. I’m over at Little Shooter’s Gas Mart. Got a gal that says she saw a guy walking away from the victim vehicle that might have had blood on his shirt and legs. Says he was a white guy, average height, average weight, wearing a ball cap with the bill to the front and shorts. Had a long scar on his face. Says he might have been wearing sunglasses and maybe a mustache. No color on the shirt or pants. Says she saw blood dripping down his legs and that’s why she remembers him.”
“Did she hear the gunshot?”
“Yeah. Says that’s what made her look over that way. She hears the bang, looks over and sees this guy walking south, then west on the sidewalk, got blood dripping down his legs…well at least one leg. Says she lost sight of him when he turned the corner.”
“No car; no gun?”
“She didn’t see any.”
“Okay, get a written statement and good contact info and check for security cameras in the area. Nice job.”
Before he could put his phone away it buzzed in his hand.
“Rothstein.”
It was an old Greenwood Village police buddy of his named Paul Nichols. He used to be a detective but got burned out on child molestation cases and went back to the streets.
“What you got, Paul?” asked Sammy.”
“Yo, Sammy, I heard about your double whammy up there. Well we just had a car fire that I think might be related.”
“Related how?”
“Well, I hear your deal looks like it might be a professional job. Ditto on this one.”
Bad news travels fast. “How so?”
“Okay, get this. The car’s a steal, no big deal there, steals get torched all the time, but here’s the kicker, the plates were stolen too, only off another car, same make, model, and color. That ain’t street punks.”
“No, too sophisticated. When was the fire reported?”
“Two-fifteen, this afternoon.”
Sammy’s brain did the calculations automatically. About thirty-five minutes after the shooting; drive time plus a few, again, too close for coincidence.
“Thanks for thinking of me, Paul. Any evidence on your end?”
“Don’t know yet. The car burned real good. Looks like a Molotov gas cap job. Course the fire guys had to play so anything that didn’t get burned probably got washed away with their big hoses. But I thought I saw some stuff that wasn’t completely fried in the backseat. Maybe some clothes or something.”
“That could be big,” said Sammy. “Our shooter did it up close and personal, there’s sure to be blood spatter on his clothes. He may have ditched them in the car expecting the fire to get rid of the evidence.”
“You want to send your guys over to sift through it? If it’s not connected to your case then all we got is a TOMV and a little arson, no big deal. But if it is your guy, homicide trumps a steal any day.”
“You think your chief will go for that?”
“Oh yeah,” said Paul. “He’s all for punting cases any chance he gets.”
“Great. I’ll send a couple guys down. And thanks.”
Sammy called Vinnie and told him to take a couple guys down with him to do a thorough search and afterward to have it towed to the lot.
Possibly two big breaks within a few hours of the crime, it boded well. The first forty-eight hours of any major crime were always important for a successful outcome. And to get so much so early gave Sammy hope that he could wrap it up soon. Especially since he had the inside knowledge of where it all may have started. Cinnamon and Barney Marko. The big question now — who was this mysterious shooter? And was he friend or foe? The two dead guys had to be Marko’s, so why were they here? To keep tabs on her? To protect her? To kill her — which?
At first glance it seemed obvious they were there to kill her. They were both armed, sitting outside her apartment, waiting for the right time. Plus there were all the people connected to her that had ended up dead. But Sammy’s mind, working on a different plane, was already sifting the colors and meshing the notes and shapes into wild equations that inverted integers, added beats to the solid bars of pyramids, while extrapolating greens and reds from hexagons. He saw the other possibility, that the dead thugs were only watching Cinnamon. That their killer was the man who sent her the obituaries. The same man that murdered all those people. The same man that planned to kill Cinnamon herself.
Sammy would not let that happen.
Cinnamon had quickly become the most important element in his life. Sammy had never been with a woman before. Women didn’t find him attractive. He was dull and boring. But with Cinnamon it was different.
She loved him — that was the most amazing thing of all — she loved him, she’d told him so. She’d shown him — she’d proven it. She loved him. He was the luckiest man alive. Just thinking of her made his heart race.
Suddenly his mind clicked. Still standing next to the car with the dead men, he looked down, searching the sidewalk. He didn’t move, stood exactly where he was, searching with his eyes.
The suspect had been wearing shorts. He had blood dripping from his leg. Why? The big guy got off a shot that hit the window post. Where did it go from there? Did it hit the suspect in the leg? Maybe.
His brain shifted to high gear now. His eyes took in everything. His consciousness left his body, floated over him examining the crime scene from every angle and time-scape, from the instant he approached to now, blending and overlapping everything, fitting it all together and noting the pieces that didn’t match. He saw the chip in the window post’s vinyl, the heavy dent in the metal beneath, noted its angle of displacement — down — it had flowed downward, toward the suspect’s legs and feet — but no — there wasn’t any evident blood from the suspect, a direct hit would have bled profusely — his mind spun the scene, viewing it from numerous angles and elevations, comparing it with the variances he’d seen when first entering the scene. He saw the lighter scar that dipped the surface of the concrete beneath his own left foot.
He lifted it and saw the small crater. He smiled. His brain had already performed the necessary calculations. He looked over his shoulder at the decorative trees that fronted the building. The bullet would be there, ninth tree down from the corner of the street. And there would be blood, possibly, if it hit the suspect, both on the bullet and the sidewalk. If not, there might still be blood from cement and bullet fragmentation striking his bare legs. It would be microscopic, but these days that didn’t matter. They could get DNA from almost anything.
Sammy made a call. The crime scene would have to be expanded, and he’d have to call in some of the County’s expensive toys.
34
Sarah Hampton
* * *
John Doe
* * *
Sarah stared at the door of her locker in the women’s locker room at the police station. She’d just come from the hospital.
John Doe’s condition remained the same except they’d removed him from the ventilator. Sarah thought this a good sign until the doctor told her he may have been able to breathe on his own all along but they hadn’t wanted to take the chance.
Sarah felt scared. She’d heard the cats again the other night. After the shooting and the hospital, when they’d made it back to the station, while Dominic wrote his report. It started quiet, like it was coming from another room, but then it got loud, very loud, right behind her. She turned and saw it sitting there, staring at her with its glowing eyes. So sudden and so terrifying she almost pulled out her gun and shot it dead. But then the rook asked her if she felt okay and she realized that he hadn’t heard it. And if he hadn’t heard it then it couldn’t really be there. So she shook her head and smiled and said she was just glad that he was all right.
Dominic went back to his report and she slipped a peak
behind her and saw the cat sitting there. It pawed at her, its claws out, long and sharp. She saw the ragged ear, the scar, and between its paws sat the severed piece of evidence. It was toying with her — playing with her — that’s what cats did right? Play with their food — play with mice — play with baby birds — play with the evidence! Well she could play too, only the cat might not like her games so much. She could use her nightstick, beat it and beat it and beat it — feeling its bones crunch and crush beneath the blows.
She actually reached down beside her seat and gripped the Diamond Wood baton, rubbing its shiny surface against her palms and fingers. It would feel so good. And the cat deserved it. It was evil. It wanted to send her back to that place, back to the ice baths and the mind zapper. She shuddered, feeling her mind trying to pull away from her body. But when she looked back the cat was gone.
After the report she went to the sergeant and told him she wanted to send the rook home. He gave the okay and they both took off. Only letting Dominic go early wasn’t the real reason she’d asked the favor. The real reason was because she could still feel her mind trying to go back to that place and when that happened only one thing helped.
Cruising the city’s alleys she searched for her medicine. She stayed in Gunwood, dangerous because one of her guys might spot her and ask what she was doing, but she’d learned it didn’t work in other cities. In fact it only worked when in visual sight of Gatling Gams — where it all started. So she kept her radio on and kept an eye out for patrol cars, and crept along looking until…there, over by the trashcans, she saw what she needed. It wasn’t a tabby, it was gray and small and scruffy, but it had the roll of meat in its mouth like they all did now. It wasn’t the cure, she understood that on some primal level, the cure would be in finding and ending the man who mutilated John Doe, that or find the actual cat that stole the evidence, but it was enough to quell the symptoms of her madness, to keep the actuality of insanity at bay long enough for her to do what she needed to do.
She would rather use a gun, it would be a lot less messy, but you couldn’t properly gut an animal and remove the evidence with a gun. No, for that you needed a knife. Besides a gun would have brought her fellow officers down on her and the game would be over that fast. But cats were sneaky animals, especially alley cats; cats that had to survive on their own with no people to pamper them.
So she’d done the deed, reaching the cat with her long baton, catching it hard on the head and stunning it long enough for her to finish it off with the knife. She’d looked for the evidence, checking its throat, its belly and then even its intestines. It wasn’t there. She’d known it wouldn’t be; after all it wasn’t the tabby. But she had to be certain, almost like an OCD experience, she couldn’t not check. If she didn’t something bad might happen — probably would happen — almost for certain would happen. And the bad thing that might happen would be her sitting in a rubber room strapped in a straightjacket with drool running off her bottom lip.
She’d cleaned up at home and later — she’d felt better — stable — in control again. But after seeing John Doe this morning she started to feel scared again. How long could she go on? There were only so many cats in the city and besides, sooner or later her luck would give out and somebody would spot her and then it would be off to the nut house where all the cats would find her and really drive her crazy. Plus they’d probably start calling her the cat lady, or cat killer or kitty crusher or something equally as stupid, and that would be sure to push her over the edge.
Still, killing the cat had helped. She’d been able to sleep.
That was a week ago.
The women’s locker room was empty, but then there were only two women on the whole force. Of course the female dispatchers used the locker room sometimes too, for when they were getting ready to work out or clean up, but usually it was just Sarah.
Still early, an hour before her shift, Sarah liked the quiet of the place, the stillness. She’d never heard a cat in here and that proved especially nice; but the cats were bothering her more frequently and they were getting more aggressive. She had to do something. She had to find John Doe’s attacker. But how? Even Sammy wasn’t able to figure anything out on the case, and Sammy was the best — freakishly good. Add to that the rook’s change in behavior. He’d been acting really weird since the shooting…strange; like he was suddenly shy around her or something. Before the shooting he was Mr. Confidence, not quite cocky, but close; always pushing the envelope. Now he seemed to be taking a backseat, waiting to see what she wanted him to do and when she told him to do something he just did it. No questions, no hesitation. And another thing, she had caught him looking at her several times with a dopy expression. At first she’d been afraid maybe he had caught on to the cats that kept coming after her, or that maybe he’d actually heard one of them, or worse, maybe he knew she was hearing them. But then she remembered all that existed only in her head, and besides, he’d given her that look even when she wasn’t hearing, or seeing the cats. So what was up with him?
It could be he’d been more affected by the shooting than he let on; if so, Sarah should go to the department shrink and have him checked over again. Two things stopped her from taking that action. First, she wasn’t crazy about psychiatrists in the first place, and second, she didn’t think that was really the problem. It was something else; something about her. He never acted that way around the sergeant or any of the other guys; only when they were alone or at odd times, like when she said something instructional or commented on something he’d done well. Of course he did pretty much everything well. Easily the best trainee she’d ever taught, he already shined better than her in several areas; tactically, reflexively, he was faster, a better shot — if she’d been as fast and as good with a gun as him the cat would never have escaped in the first place — better handcuffing techniques, hand to hand combat. Of course he’d been a soldier, a Marine, decorated and sharpened in actual combat. He had that over her. Sarah was tough, especially for a woman, but she’d always been a realist and understood her limitations. Besides it was no insult to admit the kid was better than her in those areas because he was also probably better than anyone else on the force, except maybe Chuck Creed. She’d once seen Chuck take out four guys single handedly in a bar fight using nothing but his bare fists. True it was over fifteen years ago, but still.
The kid reminded her a lot of Chuck. Go figure. The only two men she truly respected and one was too old, not to mention married with kids, and the other just a baby; her luck in a nutshell.
She strapped on her vest, buckled her belt, checked her cuffs, her Taser, her flashlight, her radio. Slipped the magazine from her gun, racked the slide back — expertly catching the ejecting shell — reinserted the magazine and slammed home the slide chambering a round. After that she popped the magazine again and thumbed in the extra bullet and reseated the magazine before slipping the weapon back into its holster. She closed her locker and started to turn when from inside the locker she heard the quiet vibrating thrum of a purr.
Looking at the locker she considered; thin metal, bullets would punch right through it, tempting, very tempting.
Sarah clenched her teeth and left the locker room to start her shift.
Part V
35
Dominic Elkins
* * *
Crushing
* * *
While Sarah stared out the front passenger side window, Dominic drove the cruiser. The shift dragged slowly on. Sarah had taken him to bar after bar, flashing John Doe’s picture at everyone and asking if they’d ever seen him. No one had. They finally stopped around twelve and she tossed the rest of the pictures into her Posse box. After that she sat quiet, pensive, which gave Dominic time to think, to sort out his feelings for his FTO. She was older than him, ten maybe fifteen years older. She’d never shown the least sign of being attracted to him, except maybe for the makeup, which he noticed she again wore tonight. She wasn’t physically beautiful, except sometimes
she was.
Dominic usually dated girly-girls, small and petite or long and slender. Sarah was neither. She wasn’t heavy but she was a little…thick, in a muscular sort of way. She could be gruff too. She had a take-charge attitude and a no-nonsense demeanor that he didn’t usually associate with women. He’d always preferred the biblical model of the woman submitting to the man out of love and the man loving the wife as Christ loved the church. Somehow he couldn’t see Sarah as the submissive type in any way shape or form. However, she was intelligent, competent, fast to react, tough, brave, honest, loyal. All traits he highly respected — in men. That threw him. Yes he did regard and respect those traits in men, but why not in a woman? After all he’d seen her take out men in a fight, hold her own against the worst kind of verbal abuse, stare down drunks, druggies, and wackos, and argue with her superiors when she thought she was in the right.
He’d taught men and women and acted as their supervisor during wartime conditions. He knew how subordinates sometimes elevated their teachers to hero status. He’d also had several cases where female Marines under his command had crushed hard on him. He’d tried not to ever lead them on, but still, it happened. Was that what he was doing? Developing an underling’s crush on a supervisor? He didn’t think so, but could he be sure? She did hold some control — some power — over his future, his career. But he’d had military supervisors in the Corp who were women, some quite beautiful, and he’d never felt like this toward them. In fact two of them had tried to get him in the sack on separate occasions.
So why Sarah?
He didn’t know. He admired her professionalism, her courage, her judgment; but there was something else, something subliminal, something that ran just under the surface, an unexpressed vulnerability that no one else seemed to recognize, a sensitivity that she masked with tough talk and attitude.
Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set Page 84
