Fatal Scandal: Book Eight of the Fatal Series (13 page)

“That’d be good.”

“Twice. And she blew me too. Satisfied?”

“Sounds like you were. So it was probably your semen that was found inside her vagina after she was murdered?”

His face got even paler than it already was at the mention of murder. “I didn’t kill her. She left my house around two, and I haven’t seen or talked to her since.”

“How come you didn’t glove up when you had sex with her?”

“She’s on the pill.”

“That doesn’t protect you against diseases.”

He shrugged that off as if it wasn’t something he worried about.

“Did she tell you where she was going when she left your place?”

“Nope and I didn’t ask.”

Sam tended to believe him when he said he didn’t kill her, but she was still going to request the DNA to make the connection to the semen. “I’m going to need you to provide a DNA sample.”

“Why, so you can build a murder case against me?” More beads of sweat joined the others at his hairline.

“If you didn’t kill her, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Right. I know how you people work. You’ll tie me to her through my spunk, and next thing you know, I’m a murderer. I take it back. I want a lawyer. I’m not saying another word until I have one.”

“Sure thing. I’ll make the call, and I’m requesting a warrant for your DNA. If that comes through, you’ll have no choice but to comply or risk additional charges. Right now, you’re only facing charges on the child support thing and resisting arrest. This could get a whole lot worse for you short of murder if you don’t cooperate.”

He gave her a mulish look and crossed his arms, sending the signal that their conversation was over.

She got up and pushed in her chair. “Detective Arnold, please take Mr. Hughes downstairs.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sam walked out of the interrogation room and ran into Terrell as he and Malone came out of observation.

“I’m thinking he’s not our guy,” Terrell said.

“Your thinking matches mine. I tend to believe him when he said she left at two. It would be easy enough to prove he was elsewhere without her last night. I’ll call the people he listed to confirm he was at the party.”

“I’ll get the warrant for the DNA,” Malone said.

“We may as well close that loop.” Sam unclipped her hair and let it fall down her back, rubbing her fingertips over her scalp. “We’re right back to square one with figuring out who killed her. I’d really like to know where she went after she left his house.”

Archie came down the corridor toward where they were gathered. “There you are,” he said to Sam. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“What’ve you got?”

He handed her a thick pile of papers. “The dump on Lori Phillips’s phone. I’ve got something else that might interest you too.”

“What’s that?”

“The vic was found in a car parked near West Potomac Park, but the nine-one-one call reporting the body in the car came from ten blocks away.” He showed her an address that had Sam’s heart sinking. It was right near Gonzo’s place. Son of a bitch. “I listened to the recording of the call. It was a man, he was out of breath, said he’d been running and saw a body in a car. He wouldn’t give us his name or any other info.”

“Interesting. Thanks, Archie.”

“I did a quick look at the text messages and there’s some other stuff in there that might help. She did a lot of texting yesterday.”

“Just what I needed to put together her day. Appreciate this.”

“Sure, no problem.” He withdrew a flash drive from his pocket and gave that to her too. “The nine-one-one call is on here. Let me know if I can do anything else to help.”

“You’ve already done a lot, thanks again.” After Archie walked away, she said to Terrell and Malone, “Let’s get everyone into the conference room to see where we are.”

“You’re going to need to head home soon to get your beauty sleep for your TV appearances tomorrow,” Malone said with a teasing grin.

The reminder of her promise to appear with the chief made her groan. “No one said I had to be beautiful.”

Malone laughed. “Your public has big expectations. You wouldn’t want to let them down, would you?”

“Ugh, shut up.”

“See how she talks to her superior officers?” Malone said to Terrell, who chuckled.

“Her reputation does precede her,” Terrell said, his brown eyes twinkling. The good-looking dark-haired agent wore an expensive suit. That must be a thing with FBI agents—he who has the best suit wins.

“I’m sure you’ve heard nothing but how charming I am.”

“Yes, indeed,” he said. “That’s exactly what I’ve heard.”

“I like this guy,” Sam said. “He rolls with me.”

“She likes you,” Malone said. “Consider yourself fortunate.”

“I am indeed blessed,” Terrell replied drolly.

“And he’s sarcastic too.” Sam wanted to add that he also didn’t stare at her the way his superior officer did. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

“I aim to please,” Terrell said with a grin.

They returned to the pit, where most of Sam’s team had gathered. “Everyone in the conference room. Ten minutes.” She took the printout Archie had given her into her office and shut the door. The first thing she did was plug the flash drive into her computer and call up the nine-one-one call.

“Nine-one-one, please state your emergency.”

“There’s a lady in a car,” a man said between heavy breaths. “I was running and saw her.”

“Where is the car located?” the operator asked.

“Near West Potomac Park. Constitution side.”

The voice sounded muffled as if the caller was holding something over the mouthpiece. Between that and the heavy breathing, it was difficult to get a read on whether she recognized the voice. She listened to it three more times, thinking of all the people who’d like to screw her and her team: Lieutenant Stahl, Detective Ramsey, her ex-husband, Peter Gibson... Not to mention the litany of criminals that had come through their doors.

Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it seem possible that Gonzo could be at fault. Who would want to do that? She listened to the recording three more times and still had no more information than she’d had before. Ejecting the flash drive from her computer, she added it to her pile for the meeting, hoping someone else might hear something she’d missed.

Then she took a few minutes to go through the text messages downloaded from Lori’s phone. Archie had taken the extra step of cross-referencing the calls to names and numbers from Lori’s list of contacts. Sam appreciated that tremendously and planned to tell him so the next time she had the chance.

She gathered all her materials, tugged her ever-present notebook from her back pocket, grabbed her phone and a pen and headed for the conference room where her team had gathered, less Cruz and Gonzo. She’d never admit to feeling somewhat hobbled without them, but they were the two detectives she relied most heavily upon.

She had no choice but to press on without them. However, their absence made her more acutely aware of how valuable they were to her. Not that she’d ever tell them that.

Chapter Twelve

“Not sure everyone has met FBI Agent George Terrell,” Sam said when she took a seat at the head of the table. Chief Farnsworth and Captain Malone were standing in their usual positions in the back of the room. “He’s helping us out on this case since it involves someone connected to a member of our team.”

After a series of murmured hellos and nice to meet yous, Sam said, “Cruz is with Elin at the hospital. Apparently she was injured at work today.”

“Is she okay?” Arnold asked.

“She was talking and pissed, so I assume so. Who’s got an update on the case for me?”

“I’ll go,” Jeannie said. “Tyrone and I were able to track down the dentist Lori worked for. He said she was a good worker, prompt, professional and reliable—until a little over a month ago. After she lost the custody hearing, she seemed to lose interest in the job and everything else. She called in sick more often than she showed up and one of the other women in the office had suggested that she was on something. The dentist was planning to speak to her tomorrow and they were going to let her go. He said, and I’m quoting here, ‘We all felt for her after the custody hearing didn’t go her way, but the recent spiral was obvious to all of us, and something had to be done.’”

“Did he give you the sense that she knew her job was in jeopardy?” Sam asked.

“We got the feeling that if she knew, she wouldn’t have cared all that much.”

“The autopsy indicated an elevated BAC, as well as cocaine in her system, so the dentist and his staff were right that she was using again,” Sam said. She divided the stack of paper containing Lori’s text messages and handed some to each of her detectives. “Let’s track down these individuals and see what they know about her movements yesterday. I want a report on each person and what you find out about them. Shoot it to my email. Have we heard anything from Crime Scene’s search of her house?”

“Nothing yet,” Tyrone reported, “but I’ll stay on top of them.”

“Thank you. We appreciate all of you giving up your holiday to come in today.”

“Murder happens,” Arnold said.

“Yes, it does,” Sam said. “I have a theory I want to run by you. First, I want you to hear the nine-one-one call, which was made about ten blocks from where the body was discovered, conveniently close to Gonzo’s place.” She made use of the computer workstation in the conference room to play the recording for her team. “Listen again,” she said after the first time. “Do any of you recognize the voice?”

“It’s sort of hard to say when it was so muffled,” Carlucci said.

“That’s what I thought too,” Sam said. “Someone was making an effort to disguise their voice, so they were worried we would recognize it. Which leads to my theory that we need to look at people who had it in for
us
as a team and as individuals. Who would want to cause trouble for our squad, our department or any of us personally?”

“Do you have people in mind, Lieutenant?” Farnsworth asked.

“A long list,” Sam said. “Starting with Stahl, Ramsey and Gibson, not to mention the wide array of people we’ve arrested, who’re currently suing us, like Melissa Woodmansee, or after us for other things, such as Bill Springer.”

“So you’re suggesting someone killed the mother of Gonzo’s child in order to make trouble for us?” Malone asked. “Kind of far-fetched, Lieutenant.”

“I know it is, but we’ve all seen crazier things on this job than someone killing someone else to forward their own agenda.”

“I think it bears looking into,” Farnsworth said. “We’ve made our share of enemies over the years, and any one of them would be thrilled to see us defending ourselves or one of our top officers against a murder charge.”

“Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to point the finger at Gonzo,” Sam said. “The security cameras in his building were disabled, making it impossible for us to prove he never left the building after he got home yesterday afternoon. His name and address were found on a slip of paper underneath the floor mat in the car Lori was found in. The nine-one-one call was made from his block. Whoever killed her wants us to think it was him.”

“But we know it wasn’t,” Arnold said. “We
know
he didn’t do it.”

“We do know that,” Sam said, “but the problem is we can’t prove it. We have his word and Christina’s that neither of them went out after they got home yesterday afternoon, but we can’t prove that either. And with the custody ruling in jeopardy thanks to Lori taking her case to the media, they both had motive.”

Arnold stared at her, his anger palpable. “He’s your friend. You can’t honestly believe—”

“I don’t believe that, Arnold. I’m just pointing out the fact that we can’t actually
prove
he didn’t do it.”

The young detective slumped down in his chair, anger replaced by fear. “We have to do something.”

“Tell me what we can do. I’m all ears.”

“I don’t know, but there has to be something.”

“The one way to definitively prove Gonzo’s innocence is to build a case against someone else—a case that will hold up all the way through a trial.”

“I did a search for Lori,” Jeannie said. “I found something interesting. She was on the board of directors for a church in Bowie that’s been tied to controversy. They protest at funerals for service members, among other distasteful things.”

“I’ve heard of that church,” Tyrone said. “They showed up at Bobby’s funeral. People were furious.”

Sam remembered that funeral for one of Tyrone’s friends from the police academy who’d been hit by a car during a routine traffic stop—and she remembered the controversy that had swirled when the church protestors chose to attend and make it about them.

“Bobby’s folks have never gotten over that,” Tyrone said. “That people who call themselves God-fearing types would turn a police officer’s funeral into such a circus... It was sickening.”

“This is a really good lead.” Sam gestured to McBride and Tyrone. “I want you two to follow up on it in the morning.”

“Will do,” Jeannie said.

Sam looked to her third-shift detectives. “Carlucci and Dominguez, dig into Lori’s financials overnight and have a report for me in the morning. You can work from home since you were here all day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Carlucci said.

“I don’t like to be dramatic about these things, but Gonzo is counting on us to take the heat off him. Let’s keep him foremost in our minds as we go forward, and let’s remember that someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make it seem like he did it. We know better. Now all we have to do is prove it. I’m going to work on the vengeance angle by paying each of my enemies a visit. Call me if anything breaks on the text messages. Otherwise, I’ll see you all in the morning.”

The somber detectives filed out of the room, their marching orders in hand. Most of them would probably work all night if it would help to clear Gonzo.

Farnsworth and Malone remained behind.

“What’s your plan for these vengeance visits?” Farnsworth asked.

“I’m going to hunt down each of them and ask them where they were yesterday,” Sam said.

“You are not doing that alone,” Farnsworth said.

“I’ll go with her,” Malone said.

Sam glanced at him. “I’ll do the talking.”

“Of course, Lieutenant. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Let’s start up at SVU and see where our friend Ramsey spent New Year’s Eve.”

“I’m with you,” Malone said.

“Keep me posted on what you find out,” Farnsworth said. “I swear to God, if this leads back to Stahl, I’ll kill him with my own hands.”

Sam swallowed hard as she recalled the last time a fellow officer had said those words to her and what had happened shortly afterward. “You’ve got enough on your plate. Leave the scumbags to us.”

“Helen emailed you the info you need for the morning,” he said. “You’re sure you’re still good with doing this? I wouldn’t blame you—”

“I’m fine with it.”

“Is Nick? Have you asked him?”

“Um, no, and I don’t plan to ‘ask’ him. I plan to ‘tell’ him I’m doing it, but he won’t have a problem with it.”

“Are you sure? We’re basically taking advantage of the fact that you’re married to the VP to deal with the media on this. We should make sure he’s on board.”

“Let me worry about him. I can assure you he’d want me to do anything I could to help you out.”

“Close the door,” Farnsworth said.

Malone, who was closest, did as he asked.

“I’ve been thinking...”

A trickle of fear worked its way down Sam’s spine. “About?”

“Maybe I should just resign. Might be best for the department—”

“No,” she said emphatically. “That would
not
be best for the department.
You
are what’s best for the department. If you quit, you basically hand Springer and all the other loudmouths an easy victory. I know it’s hard. I know it’s awful to be caught in the crosshairs with the media. I was there myself not all that long ago after Johnson blew up in my face, and it’s no fun at all when you’re in the thick of it. As hard as it is when it’s happening, it passes. They move on to something else, and they forget about you. It’ll happen this time too.”

“You’re right, and I’ve certainly seen it happen enough times. But Springer is determined. I fear he’s not going to be happy with anything less than my head on a stake.”

“So you’re just going to hand it to him? Sir.”

Farnsworth laughed. “Don’t you love how she tacks on that ‘sir’ at the end when she remembers who she’s talking to?”

“I find that equally endearing when she does it to me,” Malone replied.

“Have your fun at my expense, boys, but you know I’m right. This too shall pass, and when it does, you’ll be right where you belong—leading this department.
Sir
.”

“As much as I hate to admit she’s right,” Malone said. “She’s right.”

“Say it again,” Sam said. “I didn’t hear you the first two times.”

Both men laughed—as she hoped they would—and the tension marking the chief’s face seemed to ease ever so slightly.

“We’ve all got your back, Chief,” Sam said. “Please don’t give up.”

“I appreciate the pep talk. Hopefully tomorrow will take some of the heat off.”

“How do you plan to explain where it all went wrong?” Sam asked.

“I’m going to tell the truth. We had built a strong narcotics case against Billy Springer and his associates, and I allowed Vice the time to finish their case before we charged Billy in the murders of his brother and his brother’s friends. It was my call. It was the right call at the moment, but our narcotics investigation was compromised, which led to the events at Billy’s grandmother’s home in Friendship Heights.”

“And when they ask how the investigation was compromised?”

“I’m going to say we are conducting an internal inquiry to determine how that happened, but we don’t know yet. And believe me, I want to know as badly as Bill Springer does.”

Sam thought about it for a long moment. “It might just work. The public will appreciate your honesty.”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”

“We will,” Sam said. “No matter what, we’ve got your back.”

“And I appreciate that more than you know. I’ll let you get going so you can go home at some point.”

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Bright and early,” he said with a grimace as he left them.

“He’s taking this hard,” Sam said, filled with concern as she watched the chief walk away.

“It’s because he knows he fucked up. He never should’ve put the homicide investigation on hold for the narcs. It shouldn’t have happened. We told him so at the time.”

“Do you think he should resign?”

“Absolutely not. Billy Springer was a murdering, drug-dealing douche bag who got exactly what he had coming to him. The only one who can’t seem to get his head around that is his father.”

“The guy’s got a big bully pulpit.”

Malone grinned at her. “Ours is bigger. He’s about to find out how much bigger it is. Now let’s go track down some scumbags and call it a day.”

* * *

“What should we have for dinner?” Nick asked Scotty, who was playing a game on his Xbox, which had been moved upstairs from the den to the room Nick was now using as an office.

“Whatever you want is fine with me.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

The one-word answer surprised him. He’d been warned that the teenage years would bring about a child he barely recognized, but he’d refused to believe Scotty would ever be “typical.” So while his better judgment told him to leave it alone, his intuition told him to dig deeper.

Moving from the doorway to the sofa they’d hauled up the stairs together, Nick sat next to him. “Hey, buddy?”

“Yeah?”

“Pause the game for a second, will you?”

Always obedient, Scotty did as he was told.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Are you bummed you have to go back to school tomorrow?”

“Totally bummed. I love vacation.”

“So here’s the thing... From the minute you came home earlier, I could tell something was off. I’m still new to this fatherhood gig, but I’d like to think I know you pretty well by now. Is it just the end of vacation that’s got you down?”

Scotty fiddled with the game controller, and when he looked up at Nick, his eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Isn’t there
anything
that can be done for Skip?” he asked softly. “I hate seeing him in bed all the time and in pain. I don’t want to ask Sam about it because I know she’s upset too.”

Touched by his concern for his new grandfather, Nick said, “They’re talking to the doctors about it, and they’re hoping he’s going to improve with time.”

“I miss him,” Scotty said, wiping away a tear. “He’s always asleep when I go over there now.”

“That’s because of the medicine they’re giving him.”

“That’s what Celia said too.”

“I know it’s upsetting. It is for all of us, but they’re doing everything they can for him, and we have to hope he’s going to get better with time. His body is very fragile. It has been since the shooting, but it’s more so now since the surgery.”

“I hate that he’s in pain.”