Deadly Consequences (9 page)

What the UNSUB couldn’t have known was that Victor Vasquez was going to be late. Sam unwrapped a Hersey’s kiss and popped it in her mouth. Was the security supervisor’s death premeditated, or was he a victim of circumstance?

Sam crumbled the tiny slip of silver foil, working it between her fingers. Miguel Sanchez was a casualty. He didn’t matter to the UNSUB. Miguel’s death was the simplest way to circumvent the surveillance cameras while the UNSUB buried his grizzly treasures. A zoo employee might have known about the monitors being on the fritz, and decided to use them to his advantage. Once the UNSUB disposed of Miguel, he knew Victor would be tied up for hours  trying to restore the feed, leaving him free to plant the amputated legs.

She kept coming back to her original question. Why here, and why now? She thought of the old expression, you don’t shit where you eat. The same could apply to the UNSUB. Why kill, where he worked, placing himself on the CPD’s radar?

Could be he liked to watch…or maybe he got off on control. That fit the profile. Control, sadism, amputation, the UNSUB was most likely a narcissist as well. In his deluded mind, he thought he was smarter than the police, to him, watching them scramble around like keystone cops was fodder for his ego.

“Damn it.” Sam dropped her head into her hands, raking her hands through her hair. She knew one damn thing for sure. The odds of a group of teens hiding out in the zoo after hours on the same night a maniac decided to use the park as a killing field was too high for her taste.  

When she looked back up, Alec hovered over her, gazing down at her with concern. “You took off mighty quick.”

Sam didn’t have the heart to tell him she wanted to be alone. “I needed to think.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Any evidence turn up in the locker room?”

Alec came around to sit beside her, the wooden bench creaking beneath him. “Wiped clean. When I left they were checking the shower for bloodstains.”

Sam dropped her elbows to her thighs, resting her head in her hands. “There’ll be blood, but my guess is it will belong to Miguel.” She exhaled, ruffling her bangs. ‘I need to be doing something. This bastard is ten steps ahead of us and every time I think we take a step forward, another victim turns up. We have men everywhere. If he’s on the premises, where the hell is he hiding? He’s like a god damn ghost.”

“A word of advice?” Alec said.

“If it’ll help.”

“You take each case too personal. You invest, and that messes with your head,” he said.

Sam recoiled. His words were a slap in the face. “Weren’t you the one who told me a little while ago that I’m a good cop?”

“You are.” He sighed, reaching for her hand. “The job is hard, the shit we see, the stuff we deal with, it’s not easy. It’s why we joke, why some cops drink, why others gamble. We need a way to disconnect because at the end of the day, if we don’t have that, the job will eat through our souls.”

Her head swiveled in his direction. Sam tried to read his expression, but shadows danced across his face, making it impossible to see. She waited for him to continue. When he said nothing she blinked, “That’s it? That’s your advice?”

He grinned sheepishly. “I was hoping you’d read between the lines.”

“I’m not in the mood for games, Alec. I came out here to think.” She leaned back on the bench. “I’m not about to eat my gun, or do anything stupid if that’s where you’re headed.”

“Not yet anyway,” he muttered.

Anger glittered in her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You treat every case as if you have something to prove. You identify the victims with your sister, and because you feel like everybody failed Melanie, you have this anger churning inside of you that makes it impossible for you to let go. Hard as we try, we don’t always find the bad guys. This isn’t the type of job where you can think with your heart, Sam You have to use your head.”

Silence hung between them. Sam simmered with unexpected anger. Alec was her rock, her mentor, her best friend. He always had her back. Constructive criticism was one thing, but to undermine her confidence in the middle of an investigation was something else entirely.

Alec sighed, stretched out his long legs, and tipped his head to the sky. “You got an extra Hersey’s kiss?”

She held up the piece of foil. “Nope. Last one.”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “Why don’t I believe you?”

“You know what Alec? Right now I don’t care what you believe.” She stood up, flipping the foil at his chest. “I have a case to solve.”

“See, now you’re blowing this out of proportion. Jesus.” Alec grabbed her arm, pulling her back down on the bench. “Settle down, babe. I was just trying to give you some perspective.”

“Perspective, huh? And that nice little speech about how cops need a release at the end of the day, is that why you’re with a different woman every night?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she wanted to take them back. Alec’s sex life had no place in this conversation.

His face mottled with anger. “This coming from the woman engaged to Special Agent Asshole? When are
you
going to wise up and realize he’s a lying, controlling, manipulative sonofabitch?”

“Thank you,” she seethed. “First you slam me as a cop, and then you attack my personal life. Are you done, or do you have another arrow you want to sling?” Sam snatched her arm out of his grasp. “Never mind. Leave me the hell alone. Better yet, go find Lombardo and tell him what you just told me. He’ll be your new best bud. In fact, maybe he
should
be your partner.”

“What is wrong with you?” His eyes reflected his hurt. “I care about you, Sam, you know that.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.” She got up, ready to stalk off when her eyes narrowed. In the heat of conversation, she hadn’t noticed the long gashes running down the length of Alec’s right cheek. She sat back down, staring at him. “What the hell happened to you?”

She’d switched gears so fast he was confused. “What are you talking about?”

Sam reached out to touch him, thought better of it, and dropped her hand. “Your face, you look like you’ve been in a fight with an alley cat.”

Alec touched his fingers to the side of his cheek, shaking his head as they came away sticky with blood. “I got slapped in the face by a tree branch when I came looking for you. You took off so fast, I was worried.” He wiped the blood on his pants. “I didn’t realize the branch scratched me.”

Sam stopped listening, flashing back to the memory of Victor Vasquez rubbing the side of his face while talking to her and Hannah earlier. She’d dismissed it as a nervous gesture, or skin irritation due to his scruffy beard.

Damn it.

Victor had no alibi; they only had his word that Miguel was already missing when he got there, his word that he’d spent the night repairing the monitors. He could have killed Miguel, shut down the monitors, and gone on with his gruesome business undisturbed.

She pinched her brow, trying to remember if she noticed scratch marks beneath his facial hair, marks that could be defensive wounds. Sam shook her head, feeling her frustration mount. There were holes in her theory that she couldn’t overlook.
Why kill Miguel when he could have simply waited until the man went home?

Victor’s words came rushing back, the same ones that eluded her earlier.
Miguel’s kid is fifteen. He started hanging with the wrong crowd. His cousin is bad news, but around the neighborhood, that makes him a big man.

“Sonofabitch.” Sam’s heartbeat quickened. The missing link, the one that tied everything together.

“Sam?” Alec called out. “Where are you going now? Come on. Stop pretending to be mad and let me help.”

She glanced at Alec and shook her head, “I’m not pretending. I am mad at you.”

She smothered a smile at his expression and broke into a run.

The temperature in the locker room soared twenty degrees with too many people crammed into too small a space. Lombardo adjusted himself and belched loud enough for the sound to echo through the room.

Matsuda glanced at him. The M.E. had dark shadows under his eyes. “You’re a classy guy, Lombardo, you know that?”

Lombardo searched for a place to sit. Finding none, he leaned against a locker. “Let me tell you somethin’ Doc.”

“Please don’t.” Matsuda said.

“No, listen, you’re gonna like this. I don’t share this with most people.”

“Oh, no, here, we go.” Rafe groaned from a corner of the room. “We’re about to hear ass-wipes words of wisdom.”

“What?” Lombardo grinned. “I help you with your sainted Maria all the time. Know why she’s still hot for you? It’s on account of you learning to be a man’s man.”

“Hate to break it to you, Spaghetti man, but it’s on account of she thinks I’m a saint for puttin’ up with you every day.”

“Yeah, yeah. Spin the story any way you want to the Doc, but if Maria didn’t love me, she wouldn’t be havin’ me over for dinner every Wednesday.” Lombardo belched again, eyes straying to the gurney. Sanchez had been a young guy, robbed of his prime, all because of those damned teenaged punks.

“She feels sorry for you, man.” Rafe moved to another corner, searching for evidence. “Figures you need at least one home cooked meal a week.”

Lombardo lifted his fingers to his lips, imitating a kiss. “Bruna’s is home cooking. They just cook it up at a restaurant.”

Matsuda finished his examination of Miguel Sanchez’s body, and snapped off his gloves. “There is something oddly disturbing and almost incestuous about long standing cop partnerships.”

Rafe winced. “Take that back, man. That is one image I don’t want in my head.”

Lombardo snorted. “You guys get funnier coming up on dawn.” He grabbed Matsuda’s shoulder. “All kidding aside, Doc, I got somethin’ to tell you.”

Matsuda raised a brow and glanced down at his shoulder. “Please don’t touch me.”

“Don’t worry I don’t swing that way.” Lombardo dropped his hand and sidled up to the M.E., talking out of the corner of his mouth in a low voice. “But that’s what I was gonna ask you, Doc. When was the last time you got laid?”

“Excuse me?” Matsuda’s eyebrows leapt into his hairline. “I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”

“It is when a little bird tells me you have the hots for a certain detective.” Lombardo jammed a toothpick in his mouth, eyeing the M.E.

Matsuda’s eyes grew hooded. “You are out of your mind.” He covered Sanchez’s body with a sheet, nodding to the men to load the body onto the van.

“I see the way you look at Sam Black. You got it bad for her, Doc. Ain’t no accounting for taste, but I know you want her. With the ramrod straight way you’ve been holding yourself lately; I’d say it’s been a while since you enjoyed a woman.”

“Again,” Matsuda said, “none of your business.”

Lombardo shrugged. “Personally, I don’t know what you see in her, but I got no problem with the ladies. Me, Sinatra, Tony Rome, know what we have in common?”

In the background, they could hear the sounds of the crime techs, the rattle of equipment, and the shutter of a camera. Matsuda raised a brow. “One is dead and one is a fictional character.” He observed, hiding a grin. “You do know that, don’t you, Lombardo.”

“Bite me, Doc.” Lombardo pulled the sheet off the dead man, and reached into Miguel’s pocket, lifting out his wallet. “Something I want a look at,” he explained, flipping through it. “What I was gonna tell you is this, forget that crap magazine’s like Cosmo spouts out. Women like aggressive men, especially with a little danger and mystery. Toss in a little suave, and a take-charge attitude and you got a seduction salad that the ladies can’t resist. I’d be happy to give you some pointers any time you want.”

“And I’m happy to have you staying out of my personal life.” Matsuda deadpanned.

Lombardo grinned, pointing at Matsuda. “That’s the kind of attitude I’m talkin’ about, Doc. Talk to a lady like that and she’ll be putty in your hand. You catch on quick.” He stopped, fingers fumbling when he came across a photograph in a clear plastic pocket inside the wallet.

Lombardo worked the picture free, holding it up to the light, heart pumping hard inside his chest. His head snapped up. “Anybody know where Sam took off to?”

Rafe cocked his head towards the doorway. “No, man, but she tore out of here in a hurry.”