Chapter Sixteen
There’s screwing up, and then there’s the massive cluster that is this operation.
I knew I shouldn’t have sent her back to the apartment. I knew it when I did it, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. The only other options were to take her with me to the crime scene, or to send her back to my place. Either had its own set of risks. If she went to the crime scene with me, she’d have been exposed to a lot of people who wanted her dead, and could recognize her. They’d see her with me and my cover would be blown. If I sent her back to my place, there was a chance she’d find what I had hidden there, and if she found that out, she’d be in more danger than ever. Ignorance can be bliss, and it can save your life. Better for her not to have that temptation to follow that particular path.
Still, I did keep an eye on her tracking device, which showed her going to the apartment and staying there. That is, if she kept it on her she was still at the apartment. But I had a feeling she would. It’d saved her tonight after she’d stormed off, and despite being royally pissed off about it, I’m sure she was the teeniest bit thankful. Maybe. Yes, it was a shitty thing to do, but, again, it was the only choice I seemed to have. Not that it excuses it, but still. When I went back to her and pleaded with her to take me back, maybe that would weight a little on the ‘Jake’s not such a bad chap’ side of the scale.
I pulled on my police department uniform and reported to the crime scene. There were dozens of uniforms and CSIs roaming around, and I was able to slip in undetected. On the surface, it looked like a mugging gone bad. And I doubted they’d find any evidence that pointed to anything else. It was only the victim that made it suspicious. Because of his connection to the seedy underworld and the recent upset of the crime syndicate, the police might suspect it had something to do with the power struggle going on. Not that they could prove it, but they’d probably file it under organized crime, pay lip service to solving a completely unsolvable case, and let it go. Sure, they’d file a ballistics report and if anything ever matched they’d follow up on it, but they knew these criminals were smarter than your average mugger, and if they gun was ever used again it’d be by a completely unrelated person in a completely unrelated crime. If it wasn’t already at the bottom of a large body of water, it’d been chucked into a dumpster or sold to some two-bit gang-banger who’d use it to rob someone, and if he was caught it’d lend credence to the mugging gone wrong theory.
A few of the other officers milling about engaged me in some idle conversation, and I used the opportunity to subtly pick their brains. I didn’t get much, other than the fact that the victim’s watch and wallet were missing, just like you’d expect in a mugging. But then one officer mentioned that the victim’s cell phone had been taken, but found smashed to pieces in the next alley. This got my attention, and sent a chill down my spine. Sandra had been tracked by her necklace, and the agency had kept tabs on Jason through his cell phone. Any typical mugger would have taken it and pulled out the SIM card, selling the phone for a few bucks on the street. An organized hit would have taken the phone, pulled the card, and tossed the phone in a dumpster to make it look like a mugging. Only someone who knew what that phone contained would have destroyed it. And that narrowed the field down considerably.
I wandered away from the crime scene to a nearby pay phone. I put in a call to a local 24-hour pizza joint and ordered a large pepperoni pizza to be delivered to the apartment Sandra was staying at. If everything was okay, I’d get there about the time the pizza did and we’d have a nice late-night snack. And if anything was wrong… but I didn’t want to think about that. I quickly changed back into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and raced across town. I was just entering the building when I heard the shout from upstairs. I raced up the stairs and saw the pizza guy backing away from the apartment door, pale and shaking. He looked at me and shook his head.
“Dude, the door was, like, kinda hanging open, and I just pushed it a little and…” He pointed at the open door. My eyes followed his outstretched arm and my stomach dropped. Blood. Lots of it. Splattered up the walls, along the ceiling, pooling on the floor. Blood everywhere.
“Call the police,” I told him. He pulled out his cell phone and made the call while I stood there in shock. I wanted to go in and look around, but I couldn’t risk contaminating the crime scene. I pulled out my own cell phone and made a call to my partner, told him to suit and work this call with the CSIs. He was good, and as much as I wanted to work this one, I was the pizza guy’s witness. I was going to make sure I didn’t get him into any more trouble than he was in, since I was the one who’d called and subjected him to this. And, as much as I wanted to believe I was professional and able to cope, I was far too close to this case to work it with any real objectivity.
I sat down on the step, my knees suddenly weak. There was no way she was dead. She just couldn’t be. Because if she was, it was all my fault. I should have risked sending her to my place. There was no guarantee she would have snooped, or even if she had, that she would have found the documents. Maybe she’d survived. There was no body, at least none I’d seen, and I didn’t even know if the blood was hers. Maybe it’d been there when she got home, and she’d left. Maybe she was sitting outside my apartment door right now.
I spent the next few hours talking to the cops, telling them what little I knew and assuring him the pizza guy hadn’t killed anyone. Howard stopped by my perch on the stairs once to let me know what they’d found, the knife and the necklace. It didn’t look good, but I wasn’t giving up hope. After another grilling about what I’d been doing wandering the apartment in the middle of the night, to which I made up a story about a late-night call from a married mistress, the cops finally told me I was free to go. The sun was just rising as I left the building and raced back to my apartment. The hallway was empty. I threw the door open and called out, but there was no answer. She wasn’t here. Okay, maybe she was somewhere else. I still refused to believe she was dead. I sat down and poured myself a drink. It’d been a long day and night, and I was running on empty.
My phone rang, and I answered more sharply than I intended. “What?”
“Bad news, boss. Robert’s dead,” Daniel informed me. He sounded grim.
“What the hell happened?” We’d planned it out perfectly, and the drugs hadn’t seemed to have had any unexpected ill effects.
“It wasn’t us. Robin was with him that morning, and she heard a noise outside the apartment. She grabbed her stuff and hid in a closet, and two men came in and killed him.”
“Is she okay?” I couldn’t have another death on my conscience. Another. I was thinking as if Sandra was dead.
“She’s fine. The men weren’t even interested in searching the apartment. The funny thing, though…” He hesitated, and I didn’t blame him, considering my mood. “According to her report, the men showed up not half an hour after the call came over the police radio about Sandra’s place.”
“You think they’re related? Whoever offed Robert thinks he had something to do with the…” I couldn’t bear to even say that Sandra had been murdered. “…the crime scene at Sandra’s?”
“Either that, or it’s a hell of a coincidence. And where this is concerned, I’m not inclined to believe in coincidences. And I think he might have known something. You know that blood the team was sent in to recover?”
I pushed my foggy brain to remember what he was talking about. “Oh, right, that vampire club. Yeah, I remember.”
“The stuff they brought back was from four different people, none of them hers. He and his partner screwed up big time. And now the place’s burned down, so there’s no recovery. They don’t have a sample of her DNA, so they can’t compare it to either of the bodies. The agency is still keeping her case open, not convinced she’s dead. Which makes sense, since they have two possible deaths that could have been hers. Robert knew she was still alive…” Daniel hesitated again as he realized he was speaking about Sandra in the past tense. But he’d already seen pictures from the apartment, and it didn’t look good. “He and Jason, and they’re both gone. In a way it doesn’t make any sense.”
“You mean them killing people who knew she hadn’t died in the house fire or car accident?”
“Yeah, it’s almost like… I don’t know, someone was – is – trying to protect her. By making sure everyone things she’s dead.”
“That doesn’t bode well for us, since we all know.” Jake was having a hard time concentrating. His eyes were getting heavy and his head was lolling to the side. He yawned.
“Well, except now…” Daniel took a deep breath. “Now it might be a moot point. After, you know. Look, you need to get some rest. We’ll go over this later, okay?”
Jake was too tired to argue. He mumbled a goodbye and fell asleep in the chair.
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