Til Darkness Falls, page 6
Brian supposed that straight guys found it hot to hear obscenities fall from those perfect carmine lips. Personally, he just found it supremely irritating.
“How in the hell can she afford those clothes on what the city pays us? It’s not like the brass does that much better than us grunts,” Angela groused when the captain’s door was closed safely behind them.
“She’s clearly doing something right.”
“Yeah, sleeping with the mayor probably.”
Brian smothered a guffaw. And he thought he could be catty. His partner could give him lessons.
“I WISH all of our crime scenes were this neat.”
Brian nodded in silent agreement with Angela’s assessment. The body was lying face down in the middle of the living room floor, the head closer to the door, while the feet were pointed toward the single, dirty window. The window was one of those swing-out models, and it was wide open. Dried blood pooled beneath the head in a small circle, indicating the most likely area of fatal trauma and the fact that the victim had died very quickly.
“You said it, doll. I hate it when deaders leave bits of themselves lying around. Next to godliness, as they say.”
The medical examiner, Jeremy Vincent, had been in charge of the city’s dead for nearly twenty-five years. Unrepentantly old-fashioned, Vincent was possibly the only man in the state Angela would let get away with calling her “doll.” He was balding, growing a paunch, and needed bifocals to see, but he was the best at what he did, even though more than one detective thought his basset hound looks made grim crime scenes appear even more depressing. Several people wearing Forensics jackets were milling around, working on their evidentiary sweep. A couple of them were walking around taking pictures of every inch of the apartment.
“The victim was one James Talbot, according to the ID in his wallet.” Jeremy pulled out a pair of latex gloves from the black case he lovingly called his “doctor’s bag.” As per procedure, he’d waited for the lead detectives to arrive before messing with the body. He crouched down next to the victim’s head, and Brian’s knees ached in sympathy when he heard the resulting creaking from the older man’s joints. His empathy quickly fled, however, when Jeremy took out a long metal probe from his bag and began poking through the victim’s blood-soaked hair. Brian was suddenly very glad that he’d only had time for a bagel and coffee that morning.
“The building superintendent found good old James after several residents began reporting a disgusting smell coming from his apartment,” Jeremy explained. Brian was surprised it had taken them that long to complain. Even with the open window, the air was pretty rank. “I’m putting the time of death at, say, two a.m. the night before last? The super got a nasty surprise when he finally checked out the source of the stink.” He glanced over to the corner of room, where a puddle of vomit added unpleasantly to the already noisome atmosphere.
“Single bullet to the head, huh?”
Jeremy glanced up at Angela and nodded. “Yep, just like the last three.”
“Perfect.” Brian felt the beginnings of a headache forming between his eyes and fervently wished he was back in the bed he’d left that morning. Quickly veering away from that unwelcome line of thought, he cleared his throat and glanced at his partner. “Why do I know this building?”
“Because it’s a front for a Cosmino business. I probably mentioned it when I was regaling you with tales from my illustrious days in Vice. The Cosminos operate a brothel in several of the apartments. If I remember correctly, our boy James here was the head pimp.” She barked out an amused chuckle. “I suspect he spent his last few hours of life availing himself of his girls.” She glanced pointedly at the trashcan sitting in the corner of the room near the threadbare couch. Brian walked over to it and shook his head as he saw several used condoms lying on top of a smashed up pizza box. He lifted up the lid of the box and saw the remains of missed toppings but no signs of rot or mold.
“You’re good, partner.” He returned her condescending smile with an indulgent smirk. “The party wasn’t that long ago, maybe even only a little while before he was hit.”
“Body’s been photographed already, so here we go.”
The medical examiner grabbed hold of the dead man’s shoulders and flipped him over. Brian made a conscious effort to hold down the bile that rose into his throat as a clammy sweat broke out over his face. Angela ignored him when he turned away to compose himself. Every time he saw a newly dead body, man or woman, young or old, Dennis’s face appeared superimposed over it like a death mask. He’d hoped that after so many years that he would have gotten over it, but it happened every damned time. If Angela noticed his rookie-like reaction, she never said anything. Still, she always gave him a moment when they reached a new crime scene to regain his composure. He loved her for it even as he hated himself for needing her thoughtfulness.
“Clean exit wound. Bullet went straight through his head, just like with the others.”
“Let’s see if we can round anyone up.” Angela’s tone was brisk, her mind firmly on the investigation. “If James was having a party right before he was killed, his guests might have something useful to offer.”
Angela headed toward the apartment door, but Brian paused and looked around. “Did any of the Forensics guys find the bullet?”
“Yes, sir.” A freckled redhead walked over to him as though he’d been waiting for the summons. Brian repressed a wince and reminded himself that to a kid who was probably only in his early twenties, he was an old man. “We found the slug in the wall.” He gingerly held out a baggie toward Brian.
Angela came to his side and looked at it over his shoulder. “Looks like the same large caliber as the others, a .45 at least. Is it clean?”
The Forensics tech preened under her gaze. “Yes, ma’am.” Brian hid a smile when he felt Angela flinch. “Well, we’ll have to take it back to the lab to know anything for certain, but I couldn’t see a thing under my field scope.”
“Okay, thanks.” Brian nodded at the kid. “Let us know what you find out.”
“Field scope.” Angela snorted. “He probably means the magnifying glass he found in his Cracker Jack box.”
“Now, now. Be nice.” He patted his partner on the padded shoulder of her jacket. He’d never had the heart to tell her that that style had gone out with the early ’90s. “Let’s split up and see if any of the girls know what happened to Jim Bob, here.”
“I TOLD you, I didn’t see nothin’.”
Brian felt his jaw tighten as he listened to the woman blatantly lie to him. “The girl in 5A told me that she saw you go into his room with two other girls around eleven the other night. Now, that’s only a few hours before James was killed. You telling me he had a trio of free ass in his apartment and let it go after only a couple of hours? Tell me another one, sweetheart.”
The woman was obviously strung out on something. Her twitchiness was due to more than nerves, and she looked like she hadn’t had a decent meal in years. Brian had to question the dead man’s taste, free or not.
“Okay, yeah, I was in his room the other night. But I swear I left before he got shot.”
Brian cocked his head to the side as he often did when he heard something interesting. Angela said the habit made him look like an adorable puppy dog. “When did I say he’d been shot? I just said that he’d been killed, not how.”
The woman paled as she realized her mistake. Her gaze darted up and down the empty hallway as though she was looking for help. Brian waited patiently for her to speak.
“Shit, man. I was pretty high that night. I don’t really remember much.”
Brian could believe that. “But you were there?”
The woman scratched the track marks marring the bend of her left elbow. “Yeah, I was there. Jimmy was workin’ over one of the other girls—fuckin’ her, I mean. He didn’t do rough stuff.” Brian nodded encouragingly. “Anyway, it happened real sudden like.”
“What did?”
“The shot. It just came outta nowhere. I didn’t hear a bang or nothin’. It got Jimmy right in the head, just like that.” She snapped her fingers to emphasize her point.
“Then what happened?”
“I ran like hell, that’s what. Some sonofabitch was shootin’, I sure as hell wasn’t gonna wait around to be next.”
Brian couldn’t fault her logic. “Who were the other girls with James that night?”
“Don’t know. I never saw them before. Just some girls from the street, I guess.”
Brian reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a beat-up tin cardholder. He retrieved one of the embossed cards the commissioner had insisted all detectives carry and held it out toward the twitchy woman. “You remember anything else, you call me. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” A moment later the door slammed closed in his face. He wondered how long it would take the woman to ditch his card.
He didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but it smelled like a sniper hit. The living room window had been open—odd, since it was the dead of winter—so there was no telltale shower of glass on the floor to indicate that the shot had come from outside. That’s why he’d thought at first that the shooter had been someone in the room. But a sniper? That changed things considerably. Either they had some crazy bastard on their hands who was a damned good shot, or someone had hired some serious muscle to wipe out the Cosminos. He didn’t need too many guesses to figure that one out.
When he got back to the victim’s apartment, Brian met Angela at the door. He told her what he’d learned from the prostitute in 2C.
“You think it was a sniper? Really?” She groaned. “Hell.”
“One of the girls must have opened the window so that the perp would have a clean shot. No other reason why it would be open when it’s so cold outside.”
“Meaning the hit was carefully planned. The captain’s going to love that. Still, at least you got some information. I totally struck out. ‘Nobody saw nothin’.’ You know how it goes.”
Brian nodded and popped his head into the apartment. “Jeremy, you got anything else for us?”
“Not right now. I’ll let you know if I find anything once I have him on the table.”
“Alright,” Brian replied. “Catch you later.”
“More than likely.”
Chuckling at the corner’s gallows humor, Angela walked beside him as they made their way down the poorly lit stairwell. Once outside, they headed straight for their unmarked car. Angela paused beside the driver’s side door and rested her hand on the roof, tapping out a mindless rhythm on the metal with the ignition key.
“The Milano family?”
Brian grunted. “Bingo.”
“Goddamn mob warfare,” she groused. “Don’t they have anything better to do with their time? I know I sure as hell do.”
Brian didn’t bother replying as they got in the car.
“SO, WHO’S the guy who’s got you all bright-eyed? Oh, don’t think I’ve forgotten about the way you practically bounced into work this morning.”
Brian thought about ignoring her but knew it wouldn’t do any good. After all, Angela had two of the most important hallmarks of a good detective, good instincts and dogged determination. He gave the scenery passing by the car window one last, wistful look.
“Just a guy I met at Blackjack’s.”
“Ah ha. Didn’t you promise to take me there sometime?”
Brian looked at her askance. “You’d probably be bored. Besides, I doubt Todd would approve.”
“He wouldn’t care,” she replied breezily. “Not like any guys would try to pick me up, right?”
Brian smiled. “Probably not.”
“Yeah, that’s what we straight girls like about gay bars. All the fun with none of the creepiness. Anyway, you were telling me about having sex with an actual person?”
“You are so hilarious.” He turned his gaze back to the window, as much to dismiss her silliness as to hide the warmth he could feel rising in his cheeks. “He was just some guy.”
Angela scoffed and shot him a glare. “I know you far too well, partner, to believe that. You’re hardly the type to hop into bed with ‘just some guy.’ So, what did he do to convince you to abandon the monastery?”
Brian sighed and decided he might as well be honest with her. It wasn’t like he could just stall until they got back to the station. Knowing Angela, she’d just pull the car over somewhere until he spit it out.
“He wanted to know why I looked upset.”
“Upset?”
“Yeah, about the captain getting up in my grill every day. About this damned case that we haven’t managed to get a single break in.” Brian ran a hand over his face to dispel the irritation that began to crop up at the mere thought of all the crap that was his life these days. “Anyway, I was sitting there, drowning my sorrows in some rotgut. He was kind enough to buy me a second glass.”
“And?” Angela pressed after he remained silent for a few seconds.
“And he invited me back to his hotel room.”
“And you went, right?”
“Yeah, I went.”
Angela let out a loud “Ha!” that threatened to damage his hearing.
“I’m glad you’re so thrilled.”
“I am thrilled, and do you know why? Because you’ve been living in a cave of your own making for far too long, sweetie, that’s why.” She glanced over at him with an emotion close enough to affection rather than pity that he let it slide. “I remember what you told me about your friend from high school, and how you’ve been so reluctant to get involved with anyone since.”
Brian shifted his body further toward the window, his discomfort with the subject making him antsy.
“But sweetie, Dennis died fifteen years ago. I know it must have been awful finding him like you did, beaten half to death by those lowlife juvenile delinquents. But from what you told me, Dennis really loved you. You can’t tell me that he would have wanted you to live the rest of your life in an emotional shell.”
An old pain started to knot and burn in Brian’s stomach, one he’d lived with since Dennis’s death. Angela was wrong. He hadn’t merely found Dennis after he’d become another teenaged, gay-bashing statistic. His best friend for sixteen years had died in his arms, hemorrhaging from a busted spleen and a punctured lung pierced by his own broken rib. His last words had been gibbered nonsense, a product of the bleeding in his brain that had been named the official cause of death. Brian hadn’t even been able to say goodbye because Dennis wouldn’t have understood him anyway.
After surviving those last few months of high school alone, he had channeled his grief into determination and ambition. He wanted to become a police officer in order to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. Since the day of the funeral, he’d felt that, if only someone had been there for Dennis, they might even now be enjoying their lives together, as friends if nothing else.
Throughout his time in college, majoring in criminal justice, he had kept that goal in mind, but those long months in the academy had been beyond stressful. Fear that someone would find out that he was gay and that he would end up like Dennis had kept him celibate. But his desire to become a cop had been too strong to let him give up, and after graduating and being assigned to his first patrol, he’d felt that he’d finally been given a chance to do something worthwhile in his friend’s memory.
But all that bright idealism had long since been smothered beneath the reality of legal technicalities and expedient politics. There were no heroes in the world, and if there were, he certainly wasn’t one of them. As the years went by, it became easier and safer just to remain detached in both his professional and personal life. If he stayed away from other people, then he wouldn’t be crushed when he couldn’t do anything to help them. He never wanted to feel like he had when he’d held his best friend in his arms as he bled to death on the inside, lying on a dirty sidewalk a mile from their neighboring houses.
Of course, Angela hadn’t been fazed by his standoffishness. She’d forced herself into his heart with all of the blunt stubbornness that had made her excel in a traditionally male profession. Like a one woman army, she’d carved deep holes in his self-protective armor and had pushed herself and her boisterous family into the chinks. Maybe that was why the man from last night had been able to affect him so deeply. It was all Angela’s fault, damn her.
“So, what does he look like?” she asked when he remained silent. “Tall, dark, and cliché?”
“More like tall, blond, and gorgeous.”
“Oooo, do tell!”
Brian smirked at her enthusiasm. “Blond, like I said, and blue-eyed. Maybe six-two, 190? All muscle, but not bulky. You know, more like a swimmer’s build.”
“I think I’m in love,” Angela swooned.
Brian laughed. “Then you’ll really like this part. He’s from Germany.”
Her jaw dropped, and she threw him a wide-eyed look before she turned back to watch the road. “Shut up! So, on top of everything else he has an incredible accent?”
“Yep.”
“Sweetie, you must have done something right in a past life.”
Angela laughed at her own joke, but Brian couldn’t join her as an unexpected chill shot through him. Unbidden, the memory of the odd sense of familiarity he’d felt for the man came back to him. Shaking off the strange feeling, he looked out of the front window and saw that they were approaching the station.
“So, when are you seeing him again?” Angela turned into the station lot and looked around for an open space. “And what’s his name?”
Ugh, Brian thought. He’d been dreading the question, knowing how she would react to the answer.
“I didn’t ask.”
Angela stopped the car dead in the middle of the lot. The sound of tires screeching assaulted Brian’s ears as the car that had pulled into the lot behind them was forced to slam on the brakes. She ignored the angry honking as she stared at him.
