Truth & Lies: A Queen City Justice Novel (27 page)

“Oh my God. Shouldn’t you be at the hospital?”

He shook his head. “Not until we get Dana back,” he said. But he knew something was really wrong. He hadn’t just overdone it. He couldn’t even think about that just now. There would be plenty of time to deal with the damage later.

“I’m running down to the cafeteria. Anyone else need anything?” Emilie asked.

No one spoke up.

Falcon—who reminded him a fair amount of his brother, Mike, sailed in the doorway then ground to a halt. “Jesus, Murphy, what the hell did you do to yourself?”

“Let’s just say that as of today, I’ve given up hope about ever being able to run a marathon,” he said with more humor than he was feeling, tugging his pant leg down self-consciously.

Eric Thompson, Dana’s partner who he’d met earlier at the house, came in with a pleasant-looking woman holding a briefcase. Deck moved his leg to stand. “Don’t get up,” Eric said, extending a hand. “This is Margo Earley. She’s one of the hearing teachers over at St. Rita’s School for the Deaf. Before Dana joined the team, she helped us a couple of times when we needed a sign language interpreter. Where’s the video?”

Deck indicated the laptop sitting on the corner of table to the left of his leg. “It’s cued up.”

They each took a seat, and Deck hit the play button.

It wasn’t any easier to watch now than it had been in his kitchen.

How long ago had this been made? Was she still all right?

“Wait, wait. Back it up a little, will you?” Margo asked. “Her signing’s a little sloppy—probably because she’s trying to be subtle.”

Deck backed up the video. “Let’s play it in half-time,” he said.

The quality wasn’t quite as good, but as Margo narrowed her eyes at the screen, she nodded.

“That’s the sign for ‘I love you,’” she said, pointing at the screen with her left index finger and making the same symbol with her right hand. She looked over at Deck with a raised eyebrow.

Deck felt his heart start to thump.

I love you too,
he silently called out, hoping Dana could feel it wherever she was. He admitted to himself for the first time that it was the truest thought he’d ever had.

Deck swallowed hard, returning his attention to the screen.

As she explained the next signs, Margo’s hands made the same movements as Dana’s on the screen, though more crisply. “Here’s she’s spelling out Cincy and that, I
think
is the sign for ‘Garden.’” She shook her head. “She didn’t complete it, but notice her attention leaves the camera for a second and her eyes shift up? He may have told her to get her hands away from her face.”

“The Cincinnati Gardens?” Thompson said. “You think she might be in Norwood?”

Deck shrugged. “That’s not that far from my place. Just a few miles.”

“The next sign… It could be the sign for picture, but that doesn’t make much sense out of context.”

Deck shook his head. What are you trying to tell me, baby?

“She just spelled out ‘FBI’…and ‘I love you’ again.”

“Take it back to the picture part again. There was something strange about the way she was emphasizing her words, but I don’t know if it was because she was speaking with an accent,” Thompson said.

“Even with the accent in place, her tones were pretty level, usually,” Deck commented, leaning forward.

“She emphasized
call
and
phone
,” Thompson said.

“Her cell phone. Where is it?” Deck asked.

Thompson looked up at the blonde woman working at the end of the table. “Emilie?”

She dug through an AV cart that had a variety of computers and various other equipment that Deck couldn’t even begin to guess the function of, until she came up with a phone.

“There were no unusual calls on her phone, so I set it aside.”

“Did you check for any photos?” Thompson asked.

Her eyes got big. “Oh God. I didn’t even think to.”

“Hand it over,” Deck said.

She slid it down the table, and Deck snatched it up.

He selected the photo icon on the main menu screen.

“Five photos and one video.”

She tossed a cable to Thompson, who plugged it into the USB port on the computer. He took the phone from Deck and navigated to the images. The other agents, Jack Falcon, Emilie, the Hispanic guy whose name he didn’t remember, and Kier MacQuaid all crowded around behind them to see what they found.

“
Holy fuck
,” Falcon exclaimed.” That’s Alonso Turlucci. How the hell is he involved?”

All five photos were of the same man. “The guy who put her in the back of the car was almost a block away…and he was wearing a ball cap and mirrored sunglasses, but the build is the same.” Deck examined the screen closer. “This looks like the Hyde Park Kroger,” he said. “What’s the date?”

“December eleventh.”

“My birthday. She went to the grocery that day. She made dinner.” He shook his head. “If this guy did something that made her take a whole series of photos and video of him, why didn’t she say anything?”

“She has good instincts but doesn’t always believe in them,” Thompson said.

“Show the video,” Deck said.

It showed the same man picking through the produce section, paying more attention to what was going on around him than to the oranges he was perusing.

“If this is the guy, then how’s Giordano involved?” Deck asked.

“Where are we on finding him?” Thompson asked MacQuaid.

“He’s gone underground,” MacQuaid answered.

That was just fucking fantastic. The only guy who could lead them to Dana was off the grid.

Thompson looked directly at Deck, his expression almost comforting. “Don’t worry. She can take care of herself. She’s a good agent who’s had a couple of rough breaks. You wouldn’t believe the hell she went through at her last post. And she came through just fine.”

How the hell did he know what she’d gone through?

He must have spoken the thought out loud, because Thompson answered.

“The FBI is very insular. Falcon knew some of the guys on her team from when he worked in Philly. Not the greatest team for a woman. She had to be almost super-human to fit in. She made one mistake, and they never let her forget it.”

Before Deck could respond, MacQuaid made a loud exclamation. “I just had an idea. I think I know how we can locate him.”



Saturday, December 13—Time Unknown

Location Unknown

“How’s my face?” Dana asked.

Anka looked up from her task at Dana. “You look like a prostitute.”

“That’s kind of the point.”

“I mean, you did a good job. It’s as good as I could have done. And I used to do this for a living.”

“How are you doing?”

Anka stopped her furious sanding and handed over her project.

What once had been a cheap toothbrush was starting to look like a pretty respectable shiv. They’d broken off the brush, leaving the rubber around the handle for the best possible grip. Dana and Anka had taken turns with the emery board, sharpening the sides to a knifelike edge and the end to a serious point. Well, one side was sharp. The second side had been whittled down, but it wasn’t quite there yet.

Sure, the weapon didn’t have the flash of a switchblade or the durability of a military KA-BAR knife, but neither did it much resemble a toothbrush. She handed it back to Anka, who went back to sanding the edge.

“If we get out of this, we have an aspiring career awaiting us in the joint,” Dana said in English.

“
Što je da?
”

Dana said it again in Croatian in response to Anka’s request for clarification.

“If we get out of here, I’m going to avoid ever being confined again,” Anka said.

Dana was pretty sure Anka still didn’t think they were going to get through this. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when we get out of here?”

“See my baby girl.”

“I met her,” Dana said. “I went to Croatia to meet with the families of the missing girls. Your parents are taking really good care of her. She’s happy and healthy.”

Tears flooded Anka’s eyes. “Tell me more.
Please.
”

“She’s adorable. She’s got all this blond curly hair. She had a little blue ribbon holding a lock out of her eyes, and it stuck straight up.”

A tear tracked down Anka’s face, and she wiped it on her shoulder. Her sawing on the toothbrush became more furious, which gave Dana some hope.

“Do you think…do you think she remembers me?” Anka’s voice was barely a whisper.

“Your parents talk about you all the time. She was looking at a photo album when I was there, and she’d point to pictures of you and her. She said ‘Mamma,’ so I think so. She may not have actual memories, but she knows who you are, and she loves you.”

“
Hvala,
” Anka said.

“We’re going to get out of this. We just have to,” Dana told her.

“What’s the first thing you’re going to do?”

Dana smiled. “Tell Deck I love him.”

“Who is Deck?”

Dana briefly explained.

“We’ve got to make a plan for how we’re going to do this. You said the man always does things in exactly the same way, right?”

Anka nodded. “He always ties me up with silver tape, then he hurts the other woman.”

“That’s good—well, not
good
, but if he’s a method killer, it means he has to more or less stick to his routine or it doesn’t give him the satisfaction he craves. You’ll need to have the knife on you.”

The problem was…where could she hide the knife?

“He won’t make you take off your clothes before he ties you up, will he?”

“He never has before.”

“Does he tie your hands in front or behind you?”

“Behind.”

“I know this is kind of…well, gross, but can you tuck it far enough down the back of your skirt that it won’t show? We’ll cover the blade with something so you don’t accidently cut yourself.”

“I think so.”

“Once I have his full attention, I’m going to start fighting back. If I can get his gun or his knife away from him, I’ll use it on him. If not, you have to get yourself out of the tape as quickly and quietly as you can and stab him with it. You can’t just cut him. You have to completely disable him.”

They talked about different places she could hit him to do the most damage.

“All we have to do is pretend to be really subservient,” Dana said. “It’ll make him think we’re helpless.”

“We are helpless,” Anka returned.

“
Hello.
Toothbrush shiv.” Dana pointed to the knife taking form under Anka’s fingers. “No. We’re not.”



Saturday, December 13—5:30 p.m.

Blue Ash Neighborhood, Cincinnati, Ohio

In the end, apprehending John Giordano was so easy, it was almost anticlimactic.

As Andrew and Murphy sat in the A/V van, watching and coordinating the effort, somehow, Andrew managed not to feel let down.

MacQuaid called up the woman at the laundry and had her call Giordano to come pick up his laundry. When he suggested that he wouldn’t be able to do so that day, she told him that they were closing the shop for the rest of the week.

Evidently, Giordano worried about clean skivvies more than he worried about getting captured by the FBI.

He’d reconsider that priority while he was rotting away in federal prison.

MacQuaid and Falcon waited for him in the back of the shop while Thompson and Rodriguez hung back out of sight around the side of the building.

“What’s the likelihood that he’ll clam up again?” Deck asked.

“Well, thanks to the note in the laundry, we have him dead to rights on a couple of different federal crimes. It behooves him to give up the truth rather than be charged for four murders and the kidnap of a federal officer.” Andrew stopped to watch a black sedan slowly roll by. There were no signs of the team from the parking lot. The van he and Murphy sat in was disguised as a Cincinnati Bell service truck and was far enough away that it shouldn’t alert him to anything. Doc, dressed in a CB uniform, was perched up in a cherry picker, ostensibly checking the wires, but in actuality, he was keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of Giordano, and preparing to cut off telephone access to the Hang ‘n’ Fold Cleaners before they went rushing in.

The sedan continued down the street, and Andrew glanced back at Murphy, who shifted on his small stool, wincing. His leg was packed with ice, and Emilie had forced him to take a handful of ibuprofen before she’d let him out the door with the team. It was clear, however, that the detective was in a significant amount of pain.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t be at the hospital?”

If looks could kill, Andrew would be breathing his last.

“The next person who asks me that is going to regret it.”

Andrew put up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Got it.”

“As soon as Dana is safely back home, I’ll get it looked at,” he said.

The intensity in the other man’s voice clearly telegraphed his feelings. “So that’s how it is.”

Murphy didn’t answer, his non-answer speaking as loudly as if he’d shouted how he felt for Andrew’s newest team member.

“Got it,” Andrew said.

“Black four-door Lincoln returning, boss,” Doc said in his basso profundo voice. “Hit the cell phone jammer.”

Andrew turned on the jammer so no one in the store could announce their presence via mobile device. He leaned in closer to the monitor. “Look alive, team. The black Lincoln is turning into the parking lot. Wait until he enters the building. Thompson and Rodriguez, wait for my mark.”

Giordano got out of the car, looked around, shrugged, and stepped into the laundry.

Andrew counted to five.

“Rodriguez and Thompson… Go
now!
”

He watched the two men rush from opposite sides of the building and into the front door.

“Go for Falcon and MacQuaid!”

Andrew could hear the ensuing melee over his headset. It was all over in a matter of seconds, and MacQuaid and Rodriguez came out of the store preceded by Giordano, his hands cuffed behind his back.