by Kelly Irvin
Her straight blonde hair was swept back in a long ponytail, but her bangs, damp with perspiration, hung in her eyes. His hand twitched with the desire to smooth them back for her. The PTSD counselor kept telling him to give her space. He was wasting a lot of the department’s money not taking what some would consider good advice. Off-limits, buddy.
Her head bent so her hair hid her face, Gabby studied the cell phone. Eli quickened his pace. “Did you get a hold of Jake?”
“My battery’s dead.”
“I’m sure he’ll have an explanation for all this.”
She raked Eli with a look that should’ve left deep gouges on his face. Her baby-blue eyes were stained red. “Don’t patronize me. The guy knew my name. He knew my brother’s name.” She faltered on the word brother. She chewed her lower lip. “He died right in front of me.”
“I know, querida.” Eli tugged his notebook from his back pocket. “Are you sure you don’t know him?”
“As I told Dunbar at least five times, I’ve never seen the guy before.”
“When was the last time you talked to your brother?”
Gabby picked at a hangnail for a couple of seconds. “Two weeks, maybe. He talks to Natalie more . . . because she’s . . . you know . . . at home more.”
Eli let the painful reference slide. Gabriella couldn’t seem to let go of guilt for something that wasn’t her fault. “Did you talk about work? Did he say if he was still on the task force?”
“You know how he is. We really didn’t talk about his work much, but he was still in Laredo, so he must’ve been. I teased him about living the life of a gorgeous young bachelor whom all the women swoon over.” She stopped, swallowed. “If you’d give me your phone, I’d call him and ask him if knows what this is about.”
Her gaze roamed toward the yellow tarp that covered the victim. Eli moved so he blocked her line of sight and handed her his phone.
She turned her back on him and began punching numbers. Her shoulders slumped, and she mumbled something he couldn’t hear. Unable to stop himself, he laid his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She shook it off. “I can’t remember . . . I had his number programmed into my cell . . . I can’t remember the last two digits.” She took a few steps toward the street. “Okay, okay, I’ve got it.”
She straightened, did an about-face, and marked the number. After a pause, the hope in her face drained away, leaving a sick, gray look. “Jake? Jake are you there? Pick up if you’re there.”
She stuffed her free hand into her pants pocket and bit her lip. Her expression was the I-will-not-cry-in-front-of-Eli look. “Gabs, querida—”
She cleared her throat. “Hey, Jake, it’s Sis. When you get this message, could you call me, please? I need to talk to you. Call the house phone. My cell is dead. Call. Please.” She disconnected, then turned toward her car. “I’m going to Laredo.”
“Give Jake time to call you back.”
“Something’s wrong. I’m going.”
“Not alone, you’re not.”
She snorted. “Why? I do just about everything alone now.”
She never was one to pull any punches. Made her a great prosecutor back in the days when he’d been in vice, before she’d decided to ditch her law degree and cook for a living. “I know that, and I’m sorrier than you can ever imagine. Stop punishing me long enough for me to do my job, and I’ll help you.”
“I can find my brother on my own.” Anger shimmered like lightning in her blue eyes. “You stay here and figure out who killed this man and why. I’ll figure out how Jake’s involved.”
She pulled her keys from her pocket and moved to unlock the car door.
Eli snatched the keys from her hand. She tried to grab them back. Not fast enough. “Give me my keys!”
“If this guy’s death has anything to do with Jake, looking for him could be dangerous. You’re not going alone.” His cell phone to his ear, Eli whirled and strode across the parking lot and along the street toward Main Plaza. Gabby scampered alongside him, still protesting. She was one stubborn woman, but then he’d always known that. “Just let me talk to Dunbar, and then we’ll go. Together.”
Together.
This case might be his second chance with her.
His last chance.
Chapter 3
Gabriella knew that look. Still talking on his cell phone, Eli whirled and strode across the street headed toward the Bexar County Justice Center. Dunbar had found something. Something important. The hunt was on.
She raced after Eli. He glanced back and sped up. He darted down the narrow street between the granite facade of the justice center and the old Bexar County Courthouse. He shoved the phone in his back pocket. “Go back to the restaurant. You can wait inside. Turn on the AC. They’ll need your shirt for evidence. You can change.”
“What did they find?”
“Looks like the primary scene.”
“Where?”
“Main Plaza.”
The victim had staggered two blocks to her restaurant. Why hadn’t he simply parked at the restaurant if he was searching for her?
They might never know.
The crime scene tape was already up on the southeast corner of the historic plaza with its bronze pavers and flat fountains that offered a cooling mist for tourists passing from the River Walk to Market Square.
A uniformed officer guarding the tape lifted it for Eli. When Gabriella attempted to pass through, he lowered it and offered her a stern stare. She stopped, but not without returning the stare with her own. She wouldn’t back off. She needed to get closer. She wanted to get closer. She wanted to go to Laredo, but Eli had her keys.
Only a few feet away but totally beyond her reach, he peered into the shattered driver’s-side window of a battered maroon Mitsubishi Galant, his arms crossed as if he was afraid he’d accidently touch something.
She tapped her Reebok on the pavement and studied the car. Were those bloodstains? How much of his own trauma did Eli relive every time he dealt with a shooting victim? She manhandled the memories to the ground. It didn’t help to relive them. Instead, she studied the scene. What did this have to do with Jake? How did a shooting off Main Plaza connect with an ATF agent? Just after midnight on an early Friday morning, traffic—vehicular and pedestrian—would’ve been light.
The courthouse and the justice center wouldn’t open for another hour. Government workers were just beginning to trickle into the eleven-story Municipal Plaza building. Not much in the way of witnesses.
A homeless man still slept on a bench. An old lady in a ratty green sweater far too warm for August fed bread crumbs to the pigeons. From the look on her face, she probably couldn’t produce her own name. The officers would interview everyone, but it seemed unlikely they knew a thing about the shooting.
The scene appeared enticingly normal, until Gabriella’s gaze landed on the car. Shattered glass on the sidewalk sparkled in the sun. Was there anyone inside? She inched forward.
The uni squared off in front of her. “That’s as far as you go, ma’am.”
“There’s no body in the car, is there?” She strained to see around him. He leaned into her line of sight. She drilled him with her best prosecutorial frown. “Is there . . . another body?”
Eli turned at the query. Their gazes collided. His eyes were black in the dappled sunlight filtering through the branches of a huge heritage live oak. He shook his head. Gabriella breathed and nodded.
No body. No Jake.
The CSU investigator crowed from where she crouched behind the open car door. “I’ve got blood. There’s blood on the steering wheel, the inside of the door, the handle. There’s splatter on the seat and the dashboard.” She stood, her face a study in focused enthusiasm. “It looks like a couple of slugs are embedded in the car’s upholstery.”
Eli joined her behind the open car door. Gabriella strained to see or hear something—anything—that would tell her who the dead man was and what it had to do with Jake.
Anot
her officer began rolling crime scene tape from meter to meter. Gabriella slipped inside it. “Huh-uh.” The officer slapped a hand on her arm.
“Don’t touch me.” She shrugged away, rubbing her wrist.
“I don’t want to have to arrest a fellow officer’s girlfriend for interfering in a crime scene investigation.” Something about the officer’s tone said he really wouldn’t mind at all. Eli’s buddies had closed ranks around him, and somehow Gabriella had become the bad guy in their scenario.
“We’re no longer dating, and you know it.”
She stomped back a few feet, then stopped. Eli strode toward her, a backpack in one gloved hand, his gaze assessing, like he was approaching a dangerous criminal. The grooves at the corners of his eyes and mouth spoke of the pressure he put on himself with every case. “Did you get an ID?”
Eli nodded at the officer, who immediately backed off. When he turned to her, Eli’s features were opaque, his eyes unreadable. He’d retreated into that far, far place of cop. Cop first, cop second, cop third. That was the Eli she truly knew. “The car is registered to an Alberto Garza. He has a Laredo address. His billfold was in the backpack. From the looks of the photo on the driver’s license, it’s our dead guy. Age twenty-two. Does the name ring a bell?”
Twenty-two. A baby. “No. I’ve never meet him before.”
Eli pointed to an advanced calculus textbook without touching it, confirming the horrific thought. “It appears he was a student at UTSA and enrolled in summer school.”
The sound of the trunk popping stopped Gabriella from saying something stupid, like he was just a kid or how could a college student end up dead at her feet? How did any of this happen? She knew how it happened. On paper. She’d never lived it.
“It’s weird, though. The one thing we didn’t find was a cell phone. What college kid doesn’t have a cell phone?”
“Everyone has a cell phone.”
“Exactly. And a laptop. No laptop found. But that could be in his apartment or dorm, wherever he lived.”
Phones were a gold mine of information. Texts, emails, social media. Especially for a college kid. “It didn’t slide under the mats or fall into the backseat?”
“They’ve been over every square inch of the interior.” Eli shrugged. “We’ll get warrants for his cell phone records if we don’t find it. We can still trace his social media activity online, but I want to see who he’s been texting.”
“Like Jake.”
“Exactly.”
The CSU investigator’s face appeared over the trunk lid. “Jackpot. Detective Cavazos, over here.”
Eli left Gabriella standing there, outside the circle. Just as she’d always been.
No, not this time. This time, it involved Jake. She would bulldoze the inner circle if necessary.
A series of flashes indicated photos were being taken behind the trunk lid. Then the investigator laid her camera in her bag and smoothed a plastic tarp on the ground next to the car. Gabriella stood on her tiptoes to see. The crime scene investigator disappeared behind the trunk lid. Reappeared and gently laid a weapon on the tarp. Two more followed.
Between the four years Gabriella had spent in the DA’s office and the four years she dated Eli, she’d absorbed a wealth of information about the endless array of weapons available in a right-to-shoot state. She sold her own gun when Natalie and the kids moved in with her. The first weapon looked like a Walther G22 assault-style rifle.
Gabriella rubbed the goose bumps up and down her arms. What was a college student doing with this kind of firepower in his trunk? Did it somehow connect with Jake’s involvement in the ATF task force? He never shared about his work, and that was fine with her. When she opened the restaurant, she’d wanted nothing more than a clean, fresh start. No more nightmares about home invasions and murders of retired schoolteachers who came home and interrupted a burglary in progress by a bunch of drugged-out teenage thugs.
“Hey, Gabriella.”
The familiar voice jerked her from her thoughts. Either shock or exhaustion had made her oblivious to the approach of Deacon Alder. She turned and smacked into the Express-News reporter’s open arms. His hug was quick, hard. He smelled of spearmint gum and spicy aftershave. “Are you all right? I heard some guy died in front of the restaurant. What happened?”
“I’m fine. Really.” Gabriella eased back from his space. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you off on Fridays?”
“A little birdie told me there was possibly a drug-related hit.” His gaze still concerned, he squeezed her arm and let his hand drop. Deacon could slay with his sapphire-blue eyes fringed by long, dark eyelashes. His wiry build and innocuous polos and khaki pants didn’t attract much attention, but one look in those eyes and he had a person’s full attention. “I happen to be working on an enterprise piece on how the cartel wars are slopping onto San Antonio. Then I find out the victim stumbled around in front of my favorite steak joint and accosted the doctor of dessert. How could I not rush to the defense of the high priestess of pie?”
“That’s sweet of you. How could you find out so fast?” Gabriella let her gaze sweep the mass of law enforcement personnel that swarmed the scene. Homicide, the crime scene unit, the medical examiner’s office, traffic control. Which one among them thought it would be a great idea to call the paper’s number one—at least in terms of enthusiasm—investigative crime reporter? “Who tipped you off?”
“Don’t worry. It’s not them.” Deacon flipped open his notebook and tugged a pen from behind his ear. “They heard the call go out for the CSU at the former mayor’s legacy plaza. Plus a homicide. Crime on Main Plaza is really going to irk him. The weekend guy called me. Tell me what happened. Did a guy really keel over and die at your feet in front of the restaurant? Did you know him? Did he try to hurt you?”
“Too bad the chief is out of town.” The chief of police felt it was important to show up for impromptu news conferences whenever a high-profile crime attracted media. “You’d have your story without breaking a sweat.”
“I don’t want the official line. I want a firsthand account from an eyewitness.”
Avoiding the questions would do no good. Deacon’s tenacity made him excel at his job. Gabriella laid out the bare bones, leaving out the salient detail regarding the mention of Jake’s name. Deacon was a friend, but he also wrote articles for a newspaper that put more than a hundred thousand copies on the street every day and reached many, many more through its website and social media.
Absently rubbing the bridge of his nose, Deacon shook his head. “That’s really bizarre. He didn’t—?”
“You need to get a life.” Eli stepped between Gabriella and Deacon. He clutched an unlit cigarette in one hand. When Gabriella opened her mouth, he stuck it behind one ear. “Seriously, why are you talking to this ghoul?”
Eli didn’t like reporters, but he particularly hadn’t liked Deacon since he’d done a series the previous year on SAPD’s increased citizens’ complaints regarding police brutality. In addition to his articles, he wrote a blog called Crime Beat that allowed him to express his editorial opinions, and he was nothing if not blunt.
Or maybe it was because Deacon so often sat at the counter in her restaurant, eating her desserts and debating politics, religion, and life with Gabriella two or three nights a week.
“Is this your case?” Deacon’s pen danced over the notebook. “What can you tell me about the victim? What was the cause of death? Do you know why he contacted Gabriella?”
“That’s Miss Benoit to you. Ongoing investigation. Call the PIO.”
“Come on, Detective, cut me some slack.” Deacon gave him a sad puppy-dog look. “We’re on the same side. Good guys against the bad guys.”
“Why would I want to help an ambulance chaser like you?” Eli rolled his eyes at Gabriella. “Not to mention a woman chaser.”
“No one is chasing anyone.” Heat crept up Gabriella’s neck and across her cheeks. Great. Like some teenager in a love triangle. “Do
n’t make it personal—”
“It’s okay, Miss Benoit. I imagine it must be incredibly hard to move on after dating a woman like you. I know I couldn’t.” Deacon’s lips curved in a smile, but his tone said he was dead serious. “Of course, I can’t understand going out for hamburger when you’ve got steak waiting for you. Or in this case why go out for store-bought oatmeal cookies when you’ve got tiramisu within arm’s reach.”
Gabriella caught Eli’s arm as his fist went up. “Eli.”
He stared at her, his eyes blazing coals in a stony face. “It seems like you’ve talked to everyone in this town about our problems—everyone but me.”
He whirled and walked away.
Trying to get her equilibrium back, Gabriella studied her shoes. She hadn’t talked to Deacon about Eli. Deacon lived and breathed crime reporting. He talked to cops regularly. And cops were like old biddies, always gossiping.
“Are you okay?” Deacon’s expression softened. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make things harder for you.”
“Antagonizing him won’t help you get a story.” She forced herself to meet his gaze. His face was smooth and clean shaven. He had none of the lines Eli’s face bore. Lines that came from living on the edge of a razor blade for three years in vice before he moved to homicide. “He could make it really tough for you to get information. Besides, you know there’s nothing going on between you and me.”
“It’s not my fault if he’s seeing something that’s not there.” His eyes blazing with undisguised anger, Deacon squeezed her hand, his palm warm. “He’s the moron. I would never do what he did. It’s a shame you can’t let him go. You could do so much better. I promise you that.”