Fatal Flaw (2 page)

Sam and Freddie spent the rest of the night interviewing Carl Olivo’s other employees, his regular customers and tracking down his scattered children. By the time the sun began to rise over the capital city, they had put together a portrait of a man who was well liked by his employees and customers but not particularly close to anyone.

Of all the people they talked to only Joseph Alvarez had related anything even remotely personal about the intensely private man. From what they could gather, Carl was a workaholic who poured all his time and energy into his restaurant and hadn’t had much left over at the end of the workday for his children, which explained the estrangement.

“I hate cases like this,” Sam said to Freddie as they rode in her car to HQ. They’d dropped his rattletrap Mustang at a garage for service. Apparently his on-again-off-again girlfriend Elin Svendsen was on again and had complained about the car’s propensity to backfire without warning. Sam had held back a laugh when he told her Elin always thought they were being shot at when it happened. “Two seemingly nice, unassuming people killed for no apparent reason.”

“Where do we even go from here?”

“I guess we wait to hear from Lindsey and the crime scene detectives.” When Sam and Freddie left the restaurant, the crime scene officers were still sifting through the freezer where the bodies had been found. “Until then, we’ve got diddly squat.”

“Lindsey said something about having to wait for the bodies to thaw before she could do the autopsy.”

“So gross.”

Since Sam couldn’t argue with that, she didn’t try. “I’ve got something I need to do when we get back to HQ.”

“You’ll want to see Gardner.”

Surprised that he knew exactly what she was up to, Sam glanced at him. “You think you know me so well, don’t you?”

Amused, he shrugged. “Am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Want me to go with you?”

“Thanks, but I’d better go alone. He’s already stonewalled you and Gonzo. I might have a better chance on my own.”

“Whatever you want, Lieutenant. The whole squad is pulling for a break on your dad’s case. I hope you know that.”

“I do, and I appreciate the support.” She’d devoted a ridiculous amount of time on the beach in Bora Bora imagining her showdown with Darius Gardner, who’d shot at her and Freddie the week before the wedding when they’d gone to ask him some questions about her father’s unsolved shooting.

At HQ, they headed to the pit. Sam went into her office to get the Gardner file and noticed a huge stack of mail on her desk. “What the hell?” she muttered. Whatever that was about she’d deal with it after she had her moment with Gardner.

Standing outside one of the city jail’s interrogation rooms a few minutes later, she studied Darius Gardner through the observation window. At just over six feet tall, Gardner had dark hair and eyes and a muscular build. It would be rather easy, she deduced, for him to overpower a young woman and brutally rape her, which was another of the charges he faced.

While he waited for Sam in the sterile room, his posture was full of insolence and attitude. He looked a lot less threatening than he had the last time Sam crossed paths with him—the day he’d shot at her and Freddie. Thanks to her partner’s quick thinking, neither of them had been hit.

Sam reached up to run her fingers over the healing wound on her scalp. After Freddie tackled her to get them out of the bullet’s way, she’d conked her head on a rock in the yard next door. The injury had been worth the outcome—SWAT had stormed Gardner’s house and arrested him for shooting at cops.

Later that day, the rape victim Gardner had intimidated years earlier came forward to finally press charges. They had him nailed on both counts, but that wasn’t why Sam had spent a big chunk of her honeymoon thinking about him. No, she’d thought about him because there was a good chance he might’ve shot her father more than two years ago.

With her wedding just days after the confrontation with Gardner, she’d had to put off this meeting for two long weeks and had made it a top priority on this first day back to work. Rolling her shoulders, she prepared to do battle. This was her battlefield, her war room. This was where she shined, and if ever there was a time when she needed to shine, this was it. Some nameless, faceless bastard had shot her father and left him a quadriplegic. If it was the last thing Sam ever did, she’d make that person pay.

“You don’t have to do this,” a voice behind her said.

Startled, Sam turned to find her mentor, Detective Captain Malone, standing with hands on hips. His warm gray eyes studied her intently.

“Yes, I do.” She returned her attention to Gardner, who tapped his fingers on the table as if he had much better things to do than wait for her. “Why’re you here so early?”

“I had a feeling this might be your first stop today. Thought you might need some moral support.”

“It wasn’t quite my first stop.” She briefed him on the murders at Carl’s.

“Oh, jeez. I love that place. I know Carl.”

“How well did you know him?”

Malone thought about that for a minute. “Not that well, come to think of it. We passed pleasantries whenever I was in there, but that’s as far as it went.”

“I got the same story from just about everyone who knows him. Looks to be another head-scratcher.”

“Aren’t they all?” Malone stepped farther into the small observation room. “Cruz and Gonzales didn’t get anywhere with Gardner.”

Sam rolled her shoulders again, fighting the tension that wanted to settle there. “I know.”

“So what’s the plan?” Malone asked.

“I’ll offer him leniency on the incident at his house in exchange for information about my father’s shooting.”

“You talk to the USA about that?” he asked, referring to the U.S. attorney.

“Nope. I have no plans to do shit for that scumbag, no matter what he might have to tell me.”

Malone chuckled. “Are you the same gal who made for such a lovely bride a few short weeks ago?”

“One and the same.” She took another hard look at Gardner. “Well, here goes nothing.”

“Sam.” Malone put a hand on her arm, forcing her to look at him. “If you don’t think you’re going to get him, walk away. Let him spend a little more time rotting in jail. Your offer will start to look a whole lot better to him the longer he’s in.”

Knowing the captain was right, she nodded, took a deep breath and stepped into the room.

Gardner sat up straighter but eyed her with disdain. “You again.”

“That’s right.”

“What’d you want?”

“Same thing I wanted that day at your house. If you hadn’t shot at me and my partner, we could’ve cleared up this whole thing then.”

“What whole thing?”

“I want to know where you were on December 28, 2008.”

Snorting, he rolled his eyes. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told you the last time—I got no fucking clue.”

“Think about it. What did you do for Christmas that year?”

He shrugged. “Same thing I do every year. Nothing.”

Sam opened the file she’d brought with her to the interrogation room. “A run of your credit cards and ATM records shows you were in the city that day.”

“What’s that prove? I
live
here.” He slouched into the chair, an arm hiked up on the back as if he was hanging out in someone’s living room. “What’s so important about that day anyway?”

That day,
Sam thought,
changed my life more profoundly than almost any other.
She withdrew her father’s department photograph from the folder and placed it on the table in front of Gardner. “That was the day Deputy Chief Skip Holland was shot on G Street.” Pulling out a second photo of her father in his wheelchair, she placed it next to the first one. “That’s him today.”

Gardner gave the photos about three seconds of his attention. “I still don’t see what that’s got to do with me.”

“You lived for a time in Washington Highlands.” She recited an address on First Avenue.

“So?”

“We found clippings, photos and other items referring to the shooting at that address after you lived there.”

Gardner propped his elbows on the table and leaned in. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told those other detectives the day you arrested me—I didn’t shoot no cop on G Street.”

“If you expect me to believe that, you’ll need to tell me where you were that day.”

He slapped his hand on the table. “I don’t fucking know!”

“Let me refresh your memory.” She listed his credit-card transactions for the day in question. “Ringing any bells?”

“Nope.”

“Too bad.” Sam relaxed into her chair. “I was willing to offer up a deal on the charges of assaulting police officers with a deadly weapon in exchange for information about the 2008 shooting. But now…” She shrugged.

“You can take your deal and shove it up your ass.”

Sam put the photos of her father back in the folder and closed it. “Then I guess we’re done here.” She stood up. “The deal expires in forty-eight hours.” Leaving the room, she tried to ignore the subtle tremble in her hands. She’d love to plow her fist into his sanctimonious face, but that wouldn’t get her any closer to the answers she needed.

“You did everything you could,” Captain Malone said.

Sam nodded.

“Take a deep breath.”

She took two of them.

“We’ll keep digging. We’ll keep looking. We’ll never stop until we close this case.”

The captain was one of her father’s closest friends. Unable to trust herself to make eye contact with him, she nodded again. She couldn’t escape the overwhelming feeling that she was letting everyone down by not being able to solve this most important of cases. To the deputy standing guard, she said, “You can take him back.”

“Yes, ma’am, Lieutenant.”

“Do you know what that pile of crap on my desk is all about?” Sam asked the captain as they made their way to the detectives’ pit.

“Wedding cards, I believe.”

Startled, Sam stared up at him. “Get the hell out of here.”

“We were inundated. They came in all last week. I heard there’s another bag in the mailroom.”

“God,” Sam said, “how embarrassing.”

“Think of it this way,” Malone said, laughing, “your undercover days are over.”

“There is that.” Sam hated working undercover—never more so than during her tumultuous investigation into the Johnson family’s drug ring, which had resulted in a child being shot and killed. Many months later, thoughts of that night still had the power to make her sick.

“So how was the trip?”

“Good.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Just ‘good’?”

“Nice try, but that’s all you’re getting.”

Entering the pit, Sam received a warm welcome back from her detectives. Even though she was still smarting from the unsuccessful confrontation with Gardner, Sam accepted the good-natured ribbing about her tan, the honeymoon, the wedding and everything else they could think of.

“All right, everyone,” Sam said. “Playtime’s over. Get to work.” She went into her office, flipped on the light and took a closer look at the enormous pile of cards that she had barely glanced at earlier.

The last thing she felt like dealing with on her first day back to work was a stack of mail, but since she had no choice but to wait for autopsy and crime scene reports from Carl’s, she sat at her desk and flipped through the cards. They were addressed to Sam Holland, Mrs. Nicholas Cappuano, Mrs. Senator Cappuano, Mrs. Sam Cappuano and Lt. Sam Holland. The many identities amused her. For the record, she might be married now, but she wasn’t changing her name at work.

Her
husband
—she still got a kick out of saying that—was just fine with that, which was all that mattered to her. She’d told him on their wedding night that she planned to be Samantha Cappuano at home, which had taken him completely by surprise.

As she sifted through the hundreds of congratulatory cards, letters and messages, Sam continued to be amazed by how popular she and Nick had become throughout the Capital region during their whirlwind romance.

“May your life be filled with all the love and joy that brought you together,” one message read.

“Amen,” Sam said. She was onboard with a lifetime of the love and joy she’d experienced with Nick over the last few months. She could, however, do without the spate of drama that began with the murder of his boss, Senator John O’Connor, continued with Nick’s appointment to complete the last year of John’s term, the murder of O’Connor family friend and Supreme Court nominee Julian Sinclair, Nick’s decision to run for the Senate in the fall election, and the investigation that led to the abduction and assault of Sam’s colleague, Detective Jeannie McBride.

Life, she had assured Nick during the blissful days of their honeymoon, surely couldn’t continue to be as crazy as it had been lately. He’d been skeptical, but he had good reason to be.

She followed her nose to a pink envelope that reeked of cheap perfume. When she opened it, she scowled at the confetti that spilled onto her desk. Why did people think anyone wanted a card full of shredded paper to clean up? “As you begin your married life, may you know good luck, good health and good fortune,” the card proclaimed.

Under the printed message, the sender had handwritten in block letters, “Dear Sam, So happy to hear you now have everything you’ve ever dreamed of—a job you love, a family you love and a man who loves you as much as you love him. No one deserves such happiness more than you do. I hope you both live long enough to enjoy all that good luck, good health and good fortune.” It was signed, “An Old Friend.”

She dropped the card onto her desk and scooted her chair back from the desk. Rising, she went to the door and signaled to Cruz in the pit. “Bring me an evidence bag,” she said.

Freddie came into the office holding the bag in one hand and a half-eaten candy bar in the other.

“Find some gloves, will you?”

“What’re you up to?”

“Just get them, will you?”

Shooting her a puzzled look, he left the office.

Sam stared at the card on her desk, her mind whirling with possibilities. In twelve years on the police force, she’d made her share of enemies. In a matter of seconds she compiled a long list of possible suspects.