Fatal Scandal: Book Eight of the Fatal Series (6 page)

“No detail for me. Just him and the boy.”

“How’d you pull that off?”

“He made it a condition,” she said with a shrug. “They wanted him badly enough to give him what he wanted.”

“That’s very cool. I can’t believe your husband is the VP.”

“Neither can he.”

Archie laughed. “So business as usual for you, then?”

“That’s the goal.”

He held up the CD case. “I’ll get something ASAP for you on this and the phone Cruz brought in.”

“Thanks, Archie.” Keeping an eye out for Ramsey, Sam went downstairs to the detectives’ pit where most of her team had assembled. Freddie was on the phone so she gestured to her office. He held up his index finger as he nodded.

Sam sat behind her mess of a desk and corralled her still-damp hair into a clip. Her brain was whirling with disturbing thoughts and implications. A knock on the door preceded Captain Malone stepping into her office.

He shut the door behind him.

“Captain.”

“Lieutenant.” He was in jeans and a sweater today, his service weapon holstered to his hip and his badge clipped to the front pocket of his pants. Though he was approaching his late forties, he was still a badass in her eyes. “Tell me what we know about the Phillips homicide.”

“She was found early this morning in a car parked on Constitution Ave near West Potomac Park. She’d been manually strangled.”

“She was in the driver’s seat of the car?”

“Yes.”

“Was it her car?”

Sam shook her head. “It was registered to a George Phillips of Bowie.”

“Let’s get someone up there to talk to him.”

“It’s on the to-do list. I need to get with my team and figure out our next move.”

“And Detective Gonzales?”

“I spoke with him earlier. He and his fiancée were home all evening, celebrating their first anniversary. They arrived home yesterday afternoon and hadn’t yet left the apartment when I saw them.”

“And they can prove that?”

“Not exactly.” She filled him in on the situation with the security cameras in Gonzo’s building. “The super said the cameras were working fine yesterday. Archie has the footage and he’s checking to see if we can figure out who disarmed them.”

“I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”

“You and me both.”

“If someone wanted to off her, who better to frame than someone who’s been locked in a custody battle with her?” Malone asked.

“I’ve had the same thought.”

“Where is he?”

“I suggested he visit his parents in West Virginia today.” She paused before she added, “As planned.”

“Good thinking.”

“How do we handle the brass on this? The minute we announce the name of our vic, the media will be all over us—and all over Gonzo. We know he didn’t do it, Cap.”

“You know that, and I know that, but we also know he had motive. As did Christina.”

“They didn’t do it.”

“We’re going to need to prove it. You got that, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam said with a sigh.

“And we’re going to have conflict of interest issues working a case in which one of our guys had a strong motivation to see this woman dead.”

“So what are you saying?”

“The chief will want to call in outside reinforcements.”

Sam bent her head, which had begun to pulse with the early signs of a migraine. “What kind of outside reinforcements?”

“You know exactly what kind.”

The FBI. Avery Hill. “I’m getting tired of having him underfoot in every investigation, as if we can’t function on our own.”

“We function just fine on our own, but sometimes we need help. Such as when he cut through miles of red tape and got a search warrant for your niece’s dorm room or when he pushed the bullet through the lab after your dad’s surgery.”

“For all the good that did us.”

“It’s more information than we had before.”

The National Integrated Ballistics Information Network had come back with no match to the nine-millimeter bullet that had been retrieved from her father’s neck.

“If the person who fired that shot screws up again, we’ll have him—or her,” Malone reminded her. “Your dad’s bullet is now in the system. The case can break wide open at any time.”

Malone wasn’t telling Sam anything she didn’t know, but her high hopes for an immediate break had been dashed.

“How’s he doing anyway?”

“Terrible. The pain is bad. The doctors say it’ll get better, but it’s been more than a month, and it’s not improving at all. They’ve got him so hopped up on morphine that he’s out of it most of the time. Just when I thought his situation couldn’t get worse, it did.”

“I’m so sorry, Sam. I know it’s rough. Hell, it’s hard on us to see him like that, and we’re just his friends.”

“You’re much more than that to him. To all of us.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do, okay?”

She nodded. “The visits from you—all of you—have sustained him.”

“We love him,” Malone said simply.

Sam needed to change the subject before she broke down in front of her boss. “We’ve got a meeting to get to.”

“Yes, we do. Speaking of shitshows.”

“I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

“See you then.”

Before she left her desk, Sam downed two of the prescription pills that kept the migraines under control. Freddie appeared at the doorway, and Sam waved him in as she chased the pills with water.

“Everything okay?” her partner asked. “You look weird in the eyes.”

“Gee, thanks. Trying to fend off a migraine.”

“Just what you don’t need today.”

“Or any day. Where are we?”

“McBride and Tyrone have gone to Lori’s apartment to interview the neighbors. I’ve got Archie’s team dumping her phone, and Arnold is trying to figure out where she worked.”

Sam withdrew Lori’s wallet from her pocket and handed it to him. “Have Arnold go through it and catalog everything in it. You may find some employer info in there.”

“Got it. Will do.”

“I have a commander’s meeting at noon. After that, we’re going to Bowie.”

“Right.”

“Sorry if this is fucking up your holiday plans.”

“It’s not. Elin had to work today anyway. New Year’s Day is huge at the gym with all the resolutions.”

“Why in the hell do people do stupid things like suddenly decide to start working out just because it’s January first?”

Freddie laughed at the question and walked away shaking his head. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”

“That’ll be the day.”

Chapter Six

With the thought of working out at a gym giving her the willies, Sam called Nick before she left for the chief’s meeting.

“How’s it going, babe?”

“Shitty.” She brought him up to speed on what her morning had entailed.

“Holy fuck,” he said in a soft whisper. “Gonzo, he’s...”

“Innocent. We all know that. Now we’ve just got to prove it. Can you give me Andy’s number? He might have some information about Lori after overseeing Gonzo’s end of the custody case.”

“Sure.” He recited the number for her.

Sam wrote it down. “Thanks.”

“Gonna be a long day, huh?”

“Looks that way.”

“I’ll see you when you get home. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

She left a message for Andy and then headed for the chief’s suite, where she was stopped by his admin. Sam never could remember the mousy woman’s name.

“Could I speak to you for a moment, Lieutenant?” she asked so softly Sam almost couldn’t hear her. Her brown eyes darted nervously toward the chief’s closed door.

“What’s up?”

“I know you’re close to the chief on a personal level.”

“So what about it?” Sam asked, immediately on edge. She hated being reminded of her personal connections to the brass. So her dad had been a big deal in the department. She’d clawed her way to her current rank all on her own. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but she tried not to think about the discretion the chief had used in making her a lieutenant after learning about her decades-long battle with dyslexia.

“I’m worried about him. He’s not himself, and his face...”

“What’s wrong with his face?”

“It’s sort of gray and unhealthy looking.”

Sam was ashamed to say that she hadn’t paid much attention to how the chief was holding up under Springer’s intense campaign to discredit him. “I’ll talk to him after the meeting.”

“Thank you,” she said, releasing a deep breath. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

“You didn’t. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.”

She glanced again at the closed door. “He listens to you.”

Sam nodded. “We go way back.” He’d been a huge part of her life growing up, as an adopted uncle. The chief and his wife had been unable to have children of their own. Sam and her sisters, among others, had helped to fill the void for them. Since she joined the department almost fourteen years ago, the two of them had worked hard to maintain a professional relationship in addition to the personal one.

Sam knocked on the door and entered to find the chief along with Deputy Chief Conklin, Captain Malone and all the lieutenants. Wow, he’d called in the troops. She nodded to Archie and Higgins from the Bomb Squad. When had he made lieutenant? She scowled at Davidson and ended up in a seat next to Vice Squad Lieutenant Cole McDonald. Awesome.

She and McDonald had locked horns at the end of the Springer case when his compromised narc investigation had fucked up her homicide investigation.

“Is everyone here?” Farnsworth asked Conklin, who took a look around the assembled group and then nodded. “Thank you all for coming in on a holiday. I appreciate it very much. As you know, the department—and me in particular—is under fire for our handling of the Springer case. Bill Springer is channeling his grief over losing two sons into a witch hunt aimed squarely at this department and this office.”

As Farnsworth spoke, McDonald looked down at his hands, which were twitching on his lap.

He ought to be twitching. His fuckup had led to a nightmare for the department and the chief. Well, if she were being entirely fair rather than only outraged, he was probably as upset about it as anyone. Sam raised her hand.

“Holland.”

“I’m wondering if we have any more information about how the narc investigation was compromised.”

Beside her McDonald froze, his discomfort and anger palpable.

Sam knew she was an asshole for blindsiding her fellow lieutenant with the question, but one of her best officers had nearly died because of his team’s screwup, and she wanted answers.

“McDonald?” the chief said. “What’ve you got?”

“We’re continuing our internal investigation. I’ve spoken with every member of the undercover team in-depth, and no one had contact with Springer or any of our other marks the night before the shoot-out in Friendship Heights.”

“So we still don’t know how he found out we were focused on him for the homicides?” Sam asked.

“No.” McDonald spoke through gritted teeth. “We don’t.”

“It’s been six weeks—”

“I know how fucking long it’s been,” McDonald lashed back at her. “Do you think this isn’t on my mind every fucking minute of every fucking day?”

“McDonald,” Malone said. “Take a goddamn breath.”

“I’m breathing just fine, Captain. We’re doing everything we can to get to the bottom of what happened that night, but I don’t yet have the answers we all want and need. I wish I did.” He paused before he added, “You should know, myself and a couple of my guys have been receiving death threats. We suspect they’re coming from the other members of Springer’s posse who’re still in the wind after the investigation went to shit.”

Farnsworth’s face looked like it had been carved from stone as everyone waited to hear what he would say. “How long have you been receiving death threats?”

“Almost from the beginning.”

“And you’re just now mentioning them?”

“We know how to take care of ourselves, Chief. We’re not looking to make it into a bigger deal than it already is. These guys aren’t going to show their faces in this city again anytime soon. They know we’re looking for them.”

“I want a full report, with details and specifics, about each of the death threats, as well as who has received them, by the end of the day,” Conklin said.

“Yes, sir,” McDonald replied.

Despite her antagonism, Sam felt for the guy. She’d had a long-term undercover investigation go south on her once. Sometimes she still had nightmares about Marquis Johnson’s agonizing screams after his young son Quentin was shot during a raid she’d led at a crack house. Quentin wasn’t supposed to be there. The fact he was there that night still weighed on Sam more than a year later.

“I think you ought to make a statement,” Sam said to the chief, surprising herself as much as the others. “You need to come clean about what happened that night and why, let them know we’re continuing our internal investigation and we understand and sympathize with Mr. Springer’s grief over the loss of his sons. You could update the press on Detective Gonzales’s condition as he continues to recover from the shot to his neck by Billy Springer, who was implicated in the murders of his brother and eight other teenagers, which would be a great way to remind them that a decorated officer was nearly killed by Mr. Springer’s sainted son.” When she realized all eyes were on her, Sam swallowed hard before continuing. “We haven’t said a word about what happened that day since that day. It might be time for an update. Sir.”

After a long pause, Farnsworth said, “What does everyone think?”

“I agree with Lieutenant Holland,” Malone said. “Springer has had the microphone and the spotlight on him for weeks now. Let’s retake control of the story. You could do the press conference and go on some of the radio and TV talk shows and just be honest. Tell them we’re investigating what went wrong and hoping to provide some answers for the Springer family, as well as the community as a whole.”

“I’d want to consult with Public Affairs,” Farnsworth said.

“I’ll get someone down here.” Conklin got up and left the room.

“I also need to clear it with the mayor. She’s been on my ass over this for weeks now.”

“Why don’t you see if she’d be willing to attend the press briefing?” Sam said. “To show her support for her embattled police chief.”

“I’ll ask her.” He seemed less than thrilled with the idea, but Sam couldn’t blame him.

Conklin returned. “Captain Norris will be down momentarily. I asked him to come personally.”

“Thank you. Does anyone else have any thoughts to add?” Hearing none, Farnsworth dismissed the other officers. “Conklin, Holland and Malone, please stay.”

Malone glanced at Sam, his brow raised in question.

Sam knew what he was asking her and nodded reluctantly. As soon as the room cleared of the other officers, Sam moved to a seat closer to the chief’s desk. “We have another situation you should be aware of,” she said, noting the ashen color of his skin. His admin was right that he looked like shit.

“What’s that?”

It pained her greatly to have to add to his worries and to give voice to her concern about Gonzo. “The mother of Detective Sergeant Gonzales’s son was found murdered in a parked car this morning. She’d been manually strangled.”

Farnsworth stared back at her, his eyes flat and blank. “This would be the same woman who recently exposed his earlier connection to the judge that heard their custody case?”

“Yes,” Sam said.

The chief’s deep sigh spoke for him.

“Tell me he has an alibi for last night,” Conklin said.

“He and his fiancée were home all night with their son, celebrating the first anniversary of the night they met. I talked to him around eleven o’clock, and he expressed dismay about the story hitting the media and the possible implications for the custody matter. He was upset but under control.”

“He never mentioned the child’s mother?” Conklin asked.

And then there’s the part that wants to wrap my hands around her fucking neck and squeeze the life out of her.

“No,” Sam said without blinking. “Sir.”

“So he and the fiancée who also loves the kid are each other’s alibi?” Farnsworth asked.

“Yes.” Sam told them about the situation with the security cameras in Gonzo’s building and the video she’d delivered to Archie earlier, hoping for a lead as to who disabled the cameras. “We’re also digging into Lori’s life. She was a recovering addict who’d recently lost custody of the child for whom she’d turned her life around. We’re hoping to find motive elsewhere before we release the victim’s name.”

“You’ll have until tomorrow before they’ll be demanding we release the name of the victim,” Conklin reminded her.

“Yes, sir. I’ve called in my entire squad to work the case today. I assumed the overtime would be approved.”

“What choice do we have?” Farnsworth asked. “I can’t afford any more shit raining down on this department, and the murder of this woman who was connected by controversy to Sergeant Gonzales is going to be a shitstorm of epic proportions.”

“Are we looking at conflict-of-interest trouble with this one?” Malone asked.

“That was my next question,” Conklin said.

Farnsworth stroked the stubble on his chin as he thought it over. “I’d like to call in Hill to consult so we can defer to him if it leads back to Sergeant Gonzales.”

“It’s not going to!” Sam said. “He’s not a murderer. He’s a decorated Homicide detective.”

“I’m well aware of his qualifications as well as his impeccable record, Lieutenant,” the chief said. “However, he’s also a father who’d do anything to protect his child.”

“Anything except murder,” Sam said. “I know him as well as I know anyone, and I’d bet my badge and my career on his innocence. Besides, one of the reasons he’s still out of work is that the strength in his arm has yet to return. I doubt he’d be physically capable of manually strangling anyone.”

“He’s been under a lot of pressure lately,” Conklin said, apparently dismissing her argument, “between the wound that’s taking a long time to heal and the revelations about his connection to the judge. People have done crazier things than commit murder when they’re under that kind of strain.”

“What’s crazier than murder?” Sam asked, adding, “sir,” as an afterthought.

“Deputy Chief Conklin’s point is well taken,” Farnsworth said.

By whom?
Sam wanted to ask, but didn’t. “We’re running the risk of the FBI and others thinking we can’t handle our own cases. We’ve called them in on the last few.”

“As I recall,” Conklin said, “you were more than happy to have Agent Hill’s help in your niece’s case.”

“That was different,” Sam said.

“How so?” Conklin asked. “Because it was personal? This one is personal to Gonzales. He had a child with the woman, and she’s been making very public trouble for him. Now she’s dead, and his alibi is his fiancée. You know as well as I do how this will play in the press, Lieutenant. Bringing in the FBI to consult covers our asses, which are already on the line right now.”

It was somewhat out of character for Conklin to raise his voice, which told Sam the strain was wearing on him too. “Fine, if you all think we need the Feds, call the Feds. But this investigation will not lead to Sergeant Gonzales.”

“If there is even the slightest hint of his involvement, we’re out of it,” Farnsworth said. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal. May I get back to work?”

“Go ahead,” Farnsworth said.

Sam left the office and ran square into the inquiring gaze of the chief’s admin. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to him one-on-one, but I will as soon as I can. I agree he looks a little gray.”

“He’s not himself.”

“He’s under an awful lot of pressure right now. Try not to worry too much. He always comes through.” The thought of him not coming through was something Sam couldn’t accommodate in her already overloaded brain.

The admin nodded, but she didn’t seem reassured.

“I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll check in with him later.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Sam left the chief’s suite and headed for the pit, crossing the lobby with a growing feeling of anxiety. Her phone rang and she took a call from inside HQ. “Holland.”

“This is Haggerty.”

“What’ve you got?” she asked the Crime Scene Unit’s lieutenant in charge.

“Any idea why there’d be a slip of paper with Sergeant Gonzales’s home address under the floor mat in our vic’s car?”

Sam felt like she’d been gut-punched. “I have some idea, but I can’t get into it at the moment. Add it to the evidence list. Anything else of interest in the car?”

“Nothing yet. I’ll have the report to you by tomorrow morning.”