Deadly Consequences (8 page)

“I need to see the surveillance footage, and I’ll need to speak to Miguel and Victor.”

“Not a problem.” Hannah rose from her chair. “Their office is right down the hall. I’ll have Victor give Miguel a call and tell him to come in.”

The door opened before they knocked. A haggard young man stood in the doorway, stepping aside so they could enter. Sam took one look at Victor’s pinched expression and instinctively wondered what he was hiding.

“Miss Phillips, Detective,” Victor ran his hand over a day’s worth of stubble, motioning them towards a mismatched set of chairs. He leaned against a slim counter in front of a huge bank of monitors. Sam was able to view almost every angle of the zoo, and watch her men conduct the search.

“Miss Phillips, I want you to know how sorry I am that
this
happened.” Victor gestured to the screens behind him. “It’s my fault. You’ll have my resignation in the morning.”

Hannah gave him a pointed look. “Did you attack those women?”

“No, Ma’am, of course not,” he said.

“Did you watch someone attack them?” She asked.

“No!”

“Then, let’s hold off on any noble gestures until we have the whole story, okay?” Hannah said.

“Yes, ma’am, thank you.” Victor sighed and pulled up a stool, perching on the edge. “Detective, I apologize for not coming out to meet with you personally. I got wrapped up in a situation.”

“Obviously, tonight isn’t business as usual.” Sam crossed her legs, pulled out a worn notebook, and balanced it on her knee. “I’ll be honest with you, Victor. Three separate incidents occurred tonight. With all these monitors in place, it’s hard to understand how that could happen.”

He raked his hands through his hair, exhaling a long stream of air. “Things got messed up tonight,” he said. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“You can start with telling me what time you came on duty.” Sam said.

His face tightened. “My shift starts at six o’clock, but we can punch in up to fifteen minutes early. Same thing goes for punching out. Since day one, I’ve gotten here fifteen minutes early on the dot. At the end of the week, it adds up to an extra two-and-a- half hours on the paycheck, you know.” His dark brown eyes fixed on his boss. “Sorry, Miss Phillips, but it’s like workin’ an extra day each month, and a few of us guys, we need the money.”

Hannah dropped her eyes. “Not a problem, Victor.” Sam got the impression that Hannah was embarrassed, as if she’d never realized how hard it was for some people to make ends meet.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Victor’s posture relaxed a bit. He drew another breath and faced Sam. “Miguel, my boss, is the straightest arrow you’re ever going to meet, a real decent guy. We got a rhythm going; he knows he can count on me to show up early.” Victor’s eyes flickered with guilt. “Today, for the first time, I was ten minutes late.

“When I got here, Miguel was gone. Normally he wouldn’t leave early, but I’m thinkin’ he might have had a problem with his son.”

“What kind of problem?” Sam asked. At this point in the investigation, every detail was important.

Victor hesitated, uncomfortable with discussing his supervisor’s business.

“You need to be straight with me, Victor. If what you tell me checks out, it may help eliminate Miguel as a suspect.”

He gripped the edge of the stool, eyes widening in surprise. “You think Miguel is a suspect? No. No way.”

“You know how this works, Victor. Everybody is a suspect until I can eliminate them.” She watched him carefully to see how he reacted.

Relief flooded his face. “Okay, I get it, I understand. Miguel’s kid is fifteen. It’s a bad age. In some neighborhoods, when your fourteen, fifteen, you got to make some tough decisions. The kind of decisions that will affect the rest of your life, you know what I’m saying?”

“Gangs?” Sam asked.

“Gangs,” Victor nodded. “But it can be other trouble too. Drugs, jackin’ cars, petty theft. Miguel’s kids were doing okay, until his son started hanging with the wrong crowd a few months back. His cousin is bad news, but around the neighborhood, that makes him a big man. He graduates high school this year, but a lot of his crew will still be at the High School with Miguel’s son.”

Victor stopped, picked up a cup of cold coffee, took a sip, and grimaced. “Miguel’s been working a lot of O/T and his wife’s pulling extra shifts at the hospital, so they can afford a better neighborhood, and get Junior into a different school next fall.”

Sam tuned out three quarters into the story. She knew most of it was for Hannah’s benefit, to keep Miguel out of trouble. Needing to redirect the focus, she asked, “You said you clocked in at ten minutes after six?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sam exchanged a glance with Hannah. If Miguel clocked out fifteen minutes early, they were looking at twenty-five minutes with the monitors unsupervised. Closing time, when it was up to security to help ensure every visitor left the zoo.

When she looked back at Victor, his right foot was shaking. Perspiration clung to his forehead and upper lip. Sam slapped her notebook shut, reaching over him to set it on the counter. “Okay, Victor, what haven’t you told us?”

“When I got here, the monitors were on the fritz again. None of them were working. We’ve done our best to keep them going the last couple of weeks, but we aren’t electricians. The best we can do is a patch job, and pray they stay on.

“Most times, they don’t all go down at once. We might lose half or a third, this time we lost them all. It took close to two hours for me to get fifty percent of them back up, another hour and change to bring back the rest.” He hung his head. “Ten minutes later, they shorted out again.”

Harrah straightened in her chair. “If this has been happening for weeks, why hasn’t it been repaired?”

“We put in a request a couple weeks back, and we keep following up, but we’re still waiting for approval.”

The director’s lips tightened into a thin hard line. Sam knew if word of this leaked out, it wasn’t going to look good for Hannah. If the cameras hadn’t malfunctioned, none of them would be sitting here right now.

Sam’s head snapped up. “Who knows about this problem?”

“Our guys, purchasing, accounting, that’s all I know of for sure.”

“And who has access to this room?” she asked.

“Me, Miguel, our crew. I think Miss Phillips has a key, so would the zoo’s president, and Mr. Jacks, Miss Phillip’s assistant. Far as I know, that’s it.”

“Can you confirm that and get back to me?” Sam turned to Hannah.

“Of course.” Hannah clasped her hands in her lap, a shadow of worry in her eyes.

“I need to talk to Miguel,” Sam said. “Can you get him on the phone and tell him I need to see him?”

“Sure.”

While Victor dialed, Hannah pushed her chair back, and paced the length of the room. “I can’t believe any of this is happening. How the hell does a request to fix our surveillance cameras sit on somebody’s desk for two weeks? It’s outrageous.”

Sam said nothing, watching the shift in Victor’s body language. His face turned an ashen hue, and his hands were shaking by the time he hung up the phone. “Miguel’s wife said he never came home.”

They had a viable suspect. Sam radioed for back up, feeling her heart thump in her chest. Miguel Sanchez had just graduated to their number one on the suspect list. With any luck, this would all be over soon.

Too wired to sit, she leapt to her feet, startling Hannah. “Is there a way to check if Miguel ever clocked out?”

Hannah blinked, a glazed look in her eyes. It took her a minute to process the question. “Yes, I can check the computer.”

While Hannah accessed the time clock, Sam spun around to face Victor. Is there a lunchroom or locker room down here?” Sam asked.

“Just vending machines, but I can take you to his locker.” Victor sank down on the stool. “No disrespect, Detective, but you don’t know Miguel like I do. He’s not your guy.”

They said the same thing about Ted Bundy, and countless others.

Alec burst through the door, Lombardo and Rafe at his heels. Sam quickly brought them up to speed.

“Nice work,” Alec winked, patting her on the back.

“I’m not ready to celebrate yet. We need proof first. Hannah, any luck?”

The director’s voice was hollow. “He never clocked out.”

Sam nodded to Victor. He led them down a short hallway, leaving them to search Miguel’s things on their own. Positioning herself in front of his locker, she nodded to Rafe to break the lock. He snapped it open with a pair of long nose pliers.

“You want me to open it or do you want to do the honors?” Rafe said.

“Go ahead.”

Rafe swung the door open. Miguel Sanchez was stuffed inside, his throat slit from ear to ear.

“Holy frickin’ crap.” Lombardo dropped his suit jacket. “They offed the head of security. That ain’t right.”

“Close the locker,” Sam ordered. “Close the damn locker.” Her eyes drifted around the room. No blood, but the faint scent of ammonia. A shower stall off to the left. Twenty-five minutes to kill Miguel, shower, clean up, disable the camera’s, and then…what?

“Damn it,” she swore.
What the hell was she missing?

Sam bolted from the locker room, feeling the burn of humiliation at her back. She’d liked Miguel as a possible suspect. He had access to the monitors and the grounds; he knew what areas his men would be patrolling. The pieces fit. A little too neat, she realized, cases like these never wrapped up that clean.

She leaned against the wall and took a breath. A feeling nagged at her that Victor said something important, but she was damned if she knew what it was. A few feet away, in the locker room, she could hear Lombardo cracking jokes, the static from the radios, and Alec calling for the crime scene unit. She curled her hands into fists, listening to them as they started to work the scene. The sounds, the jokes, even the radio felt like needles digging into her skin. She needed to clear her head if she any chance of remembering what Victor said.

Sam bounced off the wall, and raced up the concrete steps, pushing past the crime scene techs rushing down, wanting to be alone so she could replay the conversation.

Following the series of hallways, she sighed with relief when she was back in the exhibit hall, jumping as a large black monkey swung towards her behind thick glass, emitting a shrill wail. On instinct, she pulled her gun, ready to confront her would be assailant, letting out a shaky laugh as she remembered where she was. In the ensuing chaos after discovering Miguel Sanchez’s body, she’d forgotten for a minute that she was in the primate house.

Heat blasted her the second she opened the door. She forced her feet forward, searching for a place to sit. It took some walking, but she found a bench, sagging down on it with a tired sigh, her body warning her that she was running on fumes. What she really needed was a cup of coffee, but since that wasn’t an option, she stared down the path, watching the shadows of towering trees drifting over the grass. Sam leaned back, listening to the leaves rustle as a breeze finally picked up, stirring the night air.

Images of Miguel Sanchez jammed into the locker swam before her, lifeless eyes, frozen in shock, the gaping wound that once was his throat. This victim had a name, a family, and a story destined to end badly. A man, working hard to give his son a better life, instead the kid would end up as one more casualty of the streets, succumbing to the gangs overrunning the inner city. It was a hell of a world they lived in, when random acts destroyed lives, and survivors meted out their own form of justice. She rubbed her eyes, feeling the pressure build inside her brain. The surveillance monitors weren’t going to help them. The UNSUB made sure of that.