by HN Wake
She stood up. “Sir, my priority is Hettie. Nothing or nobody else.”
“You just do your job, Agent. I’ll deal with the family.”
“You’ll deal with the politics, sir?”
He hung up.
Staff Operations Specialist Lea Peck picked up her phone on the second ring. “Dom. How-the-hell-in-Alabama are you? Please tell me you’re back.”
Amidst the drifting stench of death, Lea’s thick Southern accent was a calming salve. “I am. And I’ve asked for you.”
“Hell, yes, you did! Girls are back together! Talk to me.”
“You at the office?”
“You bet. What have we got?”
Dom imagined Lea at a desk in the huge brightly lit analyst floor of the downtown Jacob J. Javits Federal Building. She was a twenty-three-year-old African American woman whose parents’ credentials, a Baptist minister and a third-grade English teacher, were remarkably upstanding. At five ten with broad shoulders and a muscled body, she was a four-time all-American in track and field and a NCAA champion for Louisiana State University’s Lady Tigers in the 60- and 200-meter events and the 4x400-meter relay. Lea strongly believed in justice, civil rights, God, and the inimitable power of a full-bodied curse word.
Over the torturous twelve months of operation St. Christopher, Dom and Lea spent endless days and nights under florescent lighting huddled across desks as they gamed out moves. What would happen if they rolled up on this perp’s girlfriend or chased down that kingpin’s enemy? Only once on that case had Lea missed a trick and she called Dom immediately.
Lea’s call had come at three am. “I missed something. It’s big. It’s bad.”
“Tell me,” Dom said.
“Our guy in Chicago purchased plastic ties at Home Depot, a plastic bed cover at Walmart, and a video recorder at Best Buy. I didn’t catch it on his credit card records. I just saw it. I’m sorry, Dom. I fucked up.”
Two days earlier, Dom stood outside the suspect’s Chicago house and talked to him through a screen door. She did not ask to go inside because they had no cause.
Lea’s oversight cost the life of a small child. Dom said softly. “Listen, stay focused. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“How can I not?”
“Because we’re gonna get him. And the others.” She sniffed. “Remember, you did not do this. They did this. They’re the bad guys. We’re the good guys. Good guys are gonna win this. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“You got this. We got this. We don’t have time to beat ourselves up. We move on. We’ll get ’em.”
“You promise?”
“Yes. I promise. We will get them.”
Lea’s voice gained strength. “We’ll get ’em like cock-sucking rats in a trap?”
“Like rats in a trap,” Dom responded.
Now, standing in Micah Zapata’s forlorn apartment, Dom was glad Lea was back. “The team is back together.”
“Tits and ass. We are back together.”
“You ready for this?”
“As I’ll ever be. Big deal family on this one, am I right? Gonna be lots of moving parts. Where you at?”
“I’m at the boyfriend’s apartment. Homicide. He’s been shot.”
Lea whistled. “Hell’s bells.”
“I’m calling Hettie Van Buren a kidnapping. And now the boyfriend. Three strikes—”
“Clock’s on.”
For the FBI, a kidnapping was considered a murder waiting to happen. The sooner an investigator found a motive and a suspect, the better a victim’s chances of survival. Dom and Lea both knew the odds were against them.
Dom paced across the living room. “I need a tap on Claude and Yvette Van Buren’s cell phones and any landlines at their apartment. Stat.”
“You expecting a ransom call?”
She spun and returned across the room. “I’m expecting something.”
“On it like a righteous angel.”
“I’ll need subpoenas and toll records going back a month for Hettie, the Van Burens, and one Micah Zapata.” She relayed his address.
“Moses has spoken. Consider it done.”
She started across the floor again. “ERT is on the way. I’ll have them send it all to the labs marked for you.”
“Manna from heaven.”
She circled into the galley kitchen. “Then I’ll need ERT to do a sweep of Hettie’s apartment. I didn’t find her phone. If she’s on the move and she has her phone, we need to track that immediately. Also, I need to know where her phone last pinged on a tower.”
“Roger.”
“When they’re finished with Hettie’s apartment, have them grab her work stuff at the Museum of Natural History. Her computer and anything from her desk. I’m gonna do a sweep here at the boyfriend’s. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Fire it up, Dom. We got this.”
Hanging up the call, Dom glanced down the silent gloom to the bedroom. Micah, what did you and Hettie get yourselves into?
She needed an answer soon. Murderers had a way of killing kidnapped victims.
6
Dom moved down the hallway’s worn carpet with one deliberate foot in front of the other. Maybe it was that Stewart Walker died when she and Beecher were so young and fragile. Maybe it was that Esther disappeared without a goodbye. For whatever reason, being in a room with an empty human shell brought on profound feelings of vulnerability and sadness. The examination of a homicide victim was the toughest part of her job. She hated it.
She stepped into the bedroom and scrutinized Micah’s body. Staring down the barrel of an intruder’s gun in his bedroom, Micah would have backed up against the wall and pleaded for his life. He probably hadn’t even tried to fight back. The shot would have thrown him against the wall where he slid into a seated position. Although his shoulders slipped sideways, the skeleton retained some stiffness with the torso still upright. Two wooden legs extended across the carpet with toes pointed to the ceiling, and a blood bloom seeped out across his white shirt and fanned down over the belt line. The crotch of his pants appeared yellowed, and his hands lay empty on either side of the hips.
A cold fog slithered up through Dom’s gut. Dank and malignant, the rising fog drained heat as it passed into her chest. Her legs froze, and her arms felt numb.
Dom raised her gaze to Micah’s face. His open eyes were sunken, and his pupils had whitened. Loose gray skin along his cheeks and the neck bore a wet sheen from ruptured blisters.
Tears stung her eyelids as a warm drop escaped. Like a high-definition movie, imaginary snippets of Micah in happier days swarmed into the void. Micah running along a beach, holding Hettie’s hand; Micah driving a car, cocky and self-assured with an elbow out the window and sun streaming on tan skin; Micah surrounded by friends, watching a soccer game, laughing with beautiful teeth, chest heaving in delight; Micah grinning over a wine at a fancy restaurant with Hettie. In her mind, Micah Zapata had been a vibrant, cheerful young man madly in love with a shy young woman. His future had been bright.
The fog in her chest suddenly contracted, drawing her ribs in on themselves in a painful cinch. She coughed into the silence and rattled her head. That’s enough of that, Dom.
Taking a step ahead, she knelt at the feet and examined the wound. The bullet had hit dead center, equidistant from either side. It was an unusually clean shot. It may have been luck, but it was more likely the shooter was a professional. It was a malevolent and cowardly kill.
Dom sat back on her haunches. Micah, what have you and Hettie gotten yourselves into?
Which of the two victims—Hettie or Micah—were more likely to be affiliated in some way with professional killers? Surely not Hettie Van Buren, a high-society trust-fund debutante with a silver spoon. No, it was far more plausible that these crimes originated from someone connected to Micah Zapata. Call it intuition or a hunch, but it was a bet Dom felt fairly confident about.
She leaned over the stiff legs, slid her rig
ht hand around the left hip, and felt an empty jean pocket. Trying the left side, she felt a cell phone and edged it out. The battery was dead. She slipped it into her coat pocket and stood.
Turning a slow 360 degrees, she took in the sparsely furnished room. The bed was a simple box set on an iron frame with a dingy cream sheet and a brown cotton blanket. Hettie’s apartment on Washington Square Park was a completely different world. It was no surprise there was only one pillow. On the single bedside table were two silver framed photos. In one, Hettie sat on Micah’s lap at an outdoor restaurant overlooking a large green canyon under a bright summer sun. Upstate New York, maybe? Hettie’s arm was around his shoulders, and she wore a devious grin as if, moments earlier, she kissed him deeply. The second photo was a black-and-white close-up of Hettie. Taken from the vantage point of a lover in a bed, she gave the photographer a sultry stare. Above a sheet around her chest, her shoulders were bare.
Dom swallowed to push some warmth into the cold dank fog in her chest.
There was nothing under the bed. In the closet, T-shirts were stacked on the shelf, shoes were kicked haphazardly, and long sleeve button-down shirts drooped on cheap hangers. The dresser drawers held a smattering of loose gray socks, balled underwear, and crammed white T-shirts. A single prescription bottle of antibiotics was the only thing of interest in the medicine cabinet. Micah appeared to have been a normal young man—no hoarding, no porn, no guns.
Dom made her way down the hallway into the living room and did a quick search. Three dirty coffee mugs were leaving rings on the wooden coffee table. A crumpled T-shirt hung over the arm of the couch. In the refrigerator, two soda cans sat alongside condiments from take-out places and a solitary jar of ketchup. In the freezer, four homemade packages with Spanish words in black ink—pollo, pescado—were gathering frost. A box of trash bags sat forsaken under the sink.
The apartment felt perfectly normal. There were no hidden drugs, no cache of cash, not even a cabinet full of liquor. In fact, it all appeared too normal. What young man in his twenties didn’t have junk? No video game consoles, no car magazines, no CDs. The apartment felt flat. Maybe Micah, a college kid on scholarship who was trying to climb out of a low-income background, had only ever intended this home to be temporary.
Two shelves swayed under heavy books with the titles The Ecology of Capitalism, Sustainability, and Forget Fossil Fuels. The Van Burens mentioned Micah was a student at NYU, and the text books spoke of an environmental major. She stepped to the shelves. Jammed in the middle of the text books was a tall yellow book that appeared to be a high school yearbook.
She pulled the yellow book, sat on the sofa, and opened the front cover. A collage of boldly colored photos captured the mischievous gleaming eyes and optimistic sparkling smiles of carefree teenagers. The cold fog returned to her chest and crept down her arms. Dom’s high school memories had not been carefree. Those lonely, somber days had been spent hiding an ominous secret.
A long dormant memory from fifteen years earlier barreled into her consciousness. In the bright empty apartment, Dom and Beecher sat silently watching the dust motes twirl on a current from Aunt Lucille’s sudden departure.
Beecher whispered, “Dom, what does it mean?”
She wanted to say We’re abandoned, but the words caught in her throat. Instead, there was silence, frozen arms, and the prickly upholstery against her legs.
The hapless spin of the motes slowed.
“Dom, what does it mean?”
The high pitch of Beecher’s voice unstuck her, and she smoothed the hair on his arm with a soft stroke. “It means it’s just you and me now.”
“What do we do?”
“I guess we go grocery shopping.” Her voice sounded brave despite her cold fear.
Later, they carried six bags of groceries ten blocks and up three flights of stairs. They had eaten cheap spaghetti on soggy paper plates, and that night they had moved the two bare mattresses into one room.
Flipping through the pages of the yellow yearbook, Dom found Micah Zapata among the rows of formal portraits. The younger version, a few pounds thinner, had been just as good-looking. He must have been a lady-killer in high school. His smile was broad, his eyes were bright, and his dark hair was tousled. Hettie would have easily fallen for those looks. Who the heck were you, Micah Zapata? Did you have a dark side?
Among the candid shots in the back of the yearbook, he smiled devilishly with his arms slung over the shoulders of two friends. On his right, a fresh-faced white boy wore a Yankees baseball hat, a black T-shirt, and a large gold necklace. To the left of Micah, a Hispanic face looked tough under a clean-shaven head. The edge of a tattoo crept along the bicep if the clean-shaven friend. Tattoos were common among gang members. Who do we have here?
Setting the book on the couch, Dom snapped a close-up of the trio and fired off a message to Lea. Any way to identify that tat on the guy to the left?
Outside on the cement stairs, shoes clomped up to the open apartment door.
Jolting upright, Dom reached across her chest for the Glock, stepped over the coffee table, crossed the room in three strides, jammed her back up against the wall, and double-gripped the gun to the ceiling. Better to be overly cautious. Better not to present your center body mass target in a direct line of sight to an unknown person entering a crime scene. Especially when that body mass was not protected by body armor, there was a dead body in the bedroom, and the stomping up the stairs was of two unidentified individuals.
7
Outside Micah Zapata’s apartment a male voice shouted, “NYPD!”
Dom lowered the Glock and took a deep breath. Shoving off from the wall, she said loudly, “FBI. We’re clear.” She rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. Better to not give off a tense vibe.
Two detectives stepped through the door, one black and large, the other Hispanic and smaller. The black one noticed as she holstered her Glock. “Sorry, did we give you a scare?”
She shrugged. “Just being prepared.”
He introduced himself as Detective Johns and his Hispanic partner as Detective Rodriguez. Both from Homicide. They scanned the scene with smart, inquisitive eyes and sniffed the putrid smell.
“You come up through Narcotics?” she asked.
They both nodded with the unruffled confidence of long tenures. Johns was huge, maybe six four, and had the calm energy of a man accustomed to getting his way. She imagined him at home on a La-Z-Boy watching Saturday afternoon football with a happy wife making nachos, a cold beer in his hand, and at least five screaming kids bouncing off walls. Rodriguez was the polar opposite at five eight with the slim build of a boxer and critical eyes that flicked left and right across the living room. He probably lived in a very tidy apartment in a clean building with a large Doberman and a boyfriend.
She nodded down the hall. “Victim in the bedroom. Single gunshot to the chest. The apartment looks pretty clean.”
Lots of older guys in the NYPD hadn’t bought in yet to the idea of women law enforcement, but neither eyed her sideways or displayed the common micro expressions of disapproval—squinting or the one-sided pull of pressed lips. These two acted nonplussed. It was a small win. “Okay, see what you think. I’ll wait outside.”
Twenty minutes later, they stepped out on the landing.
She asked, “Whatta ya think?”
“Mm-hmm. Not a whole lot. Clean kill, like you said. Chest. Thiry-five caliber. Maybe two days ago?” Johns spoke with a calm confidence, unperturbed by the body inside.
Rodriguez stood as the silent partner, taking the measure of her.
Johns scanned the room and hummed like a father that soothed multiple children. “Mm-hmm. We usually see crime scenes that are all messed up. Overturned beds, trashed closets. You know the drill. Hoods come in, take the shot, look around for reward. No associated burglary. This had none of that. Also, the home is clean, tidy. Mostly we see poverty, grime, paraphernalia. You know what I’m talking about.”
She nodded. “Too clean. Guy seems real normal.”
They both nodded.
“Mm-hmm. Shooter came in, did the job, left. Intent was the kill shot.”
“Agreed. Anything that tweaked a motive for you?”
Johns shook his head.
She counted off with her fingers. “Personal dispute. A wronged girlfriend. A heavy collecting a gambling debt. Drug related.”
Johns nodded. “I feel you. Could be any of those, but—”
“But the shot looks professional.”
“Agreed. Doesn’t smell like a novice.”
She cracked her knuckles. “Here’s the hinky. The vic is related to a kidnapping.”
“How’s that?” Johns asked.
“Rich white girl. Washington Square Park.”
Both men frowned.
“I think the perp took the girlfriend. Somehow connected. The timing is way too coincidental.”
“No shit. A kid from the Bronx tapping a Village girl? He gets hit and the girl’s a 134?” 134 was police code for a kidnapping.
She nodded.
Johns whistled. “I don’t envy you. That case ain’t for the fainthearted.”
She pulled out her phone and showed them the photo of the friend’s tattoo. “You recognize this?”
Rodriguez scratched his cheek. “Can’t tell.” He had an unusually high-pitched voice, which is probably why he didn’t talk much. He pointed at the photo. “Could be a clown. That’s something. A crying clown tat stands for ‘laugh now, cry later,’ as in they’re winning now out on the streets but they know it will catch up with them. But you can’t really tell from that photo. Could be something else.”
All three stood silently considering the possibilities of a West Village rich girl tied up in something gang related.
Dom slid her phone in her pocket. “It might be gang?”
Both men nodded.
Rodriguez spoke again. “It jives with the Honduran thing,”
Dom and Johns gave him questioning looks.