by HN Wake
“Roger that.”
Next, Dom called Fontaine.
After the wails in the Zapata apartment, his voice was cream butter. “What have you got?”
“Not much. But the vic—the boyfriend—had a history. Not sure how heavy. He did some drugs in high school, but it sounds like college turned him around. The parents are confident he was on the straight and narrow, and his apartment was squeaky clean. But maybe old friends have come back to haunt him.”
“Okay, that sounds like a rabbit hole.”
“Also, there’s a tough guy brother who’s done some time.”
“Huh. Follow both leads. I’ve apprised the Van Burens of the situation. They’e going to keep working with us. For the moment.”
“Understood.”
“But, Dom, we need to find Hettie fast. The clock is on. I don’t need to tell you that.”
10
The Jiffy Lube on Harlem’s Broadhurst Avenue did not appear commercially viable. The two garage bays were empty, and the only car on the small cement lot was a rusted 1990s VW Rabbit. A long twisting crack in the office window was taped with silver duct tape. Debris took flight on a breeze wafting through one of two alleys on either side of the small building. It was a struggling business in a neighborhood ransacked by poverty and brutality.
Dom parked a few hundred yards past the garage as a long Lincoln rolled past, four windows open, two heads nodding, and a deep bass thumping. She stretched out of the sports car and with a practiced gesture, tapped the holstered Glock. As she approached the ramshackle Jiffy Lube, her skin tightened. Guys with rap sheets were tricky. They were used to bucking authority, defending territory, and if threatened, making unpredictable decisions. Few had qualms resorting to violence.
Dom slid the pair of sunglasses to the top of her head. It was better to look casual and calm than a lone hard-nosed Feddie in a precarious situation. Nothing to see here. Just coming to ask a few easy questions.
Something darted behind the bandaged garage window. She slowed. Through the dirty glass, two dark eyes narrowed into a hard stare. She stepped onto the cement of the Jiffy Lube’s lot and stopped, hands empty by her thighs. Just a single unintimidating female Feddie here to have a nice calm chat. She nodded to the window.
The eyes disappeared. A minute later, a man in gray, dirty coveralls flew through the doorway and raced to the far alley.
Seriously? She leaned and lunged into a sprint. Racing past the VW, she cornered right into the alley at full speed, pulling her Glock and training it ahead. Up ahead, the man in the gray coveralls moved fast, arms scissoring. The chain-link fence flew past. Her thighs pumped. “FBI. Freeze, freeze!”
Under the coveralls, the body was tight and lean, and the sprint was fast. He covered ground quickly, opening the distance between them with every stride.
She leaned into the sprint and pushed harder on her feet as her chest heaved.
Reaching the alley’s opening, he glanced over his shoulder and his left hand fanned out.
“FBI, freeze!”
At full sprint, his hand seized the corner pole. His momentum yanked his arm straight, pitched his body up, and swung him left in a wide arc around the corner. He was out of sight.
She pumped her burning legs harder. After reaching the end of the alley, she grasped the pole and pitched herself around the corner—fast and blind.
Three feet ahead, Roberto faced her. His chest heaved and his right arm was stretched overhead with a steel pole poised to smash her head.
Landing on her feet, she trained the gun on his chest, threw her left palm up, and coughed through gasps, “This is about Micah.”
Roberto froze.
The fight or flight theory is incomplete. In the face of something frightening, one doesn’t immediately flee or fight. A person freezes. The instant paralysis is a subconscious holdover from when early humans, walking the plains, sighted a predator.
Roberto stood frozen with wide eyes.
She flared her left fingers wide with a conciliatory palm by her shoulder. “This is about Micah. This isn’t about you, Roberto. I don’t want you.”
Micah was as still as a wary gazelle.
“It’s about Micah.”
He glared, the outstretched arm stiffened, and the neck tattoos stretched across straining muscles.
“It’s about your brother. I’m not here for you.”
He blinked.
Say it again to let it sink in. “I’m not here for you. Your parents sent me.”
His left foot stepped back in a tiny but recognizable step. It was a good sign. In the face of fear, the second subconscious survival reaction was flight.
She lowered her left palm slowly. “Lower. The. Pole. Let’s talk.” She didn’t want him to run.
His breathing normalized, and the pole began to tremble.
“Roberto, something has happened to Micah. Now please lower the pole, and we’ll talk.”
His face softened a fraction, and the pole descended. From behind and down the block, someone yelled, “Pig, go home!”
The pole shot back up, his nostrils flared, his eyes darted to the distance, and Roberto took a step toward her.
Uh-oh. When neither freezing nor fleeing relieves the fear, the next animal instinct was fight. When a body prepares to fight, it makes a movement toward the opponent.
She yelled to grab his attention. “Roberto! We’re good! Lower the pole again. Ignore the bystanders. They got nothing to do with this. I’m here about your brother. Look at me, we’re good.”
He glanced at her.
She lowered her outstretched hand. “I need you to lower your weapon, then I’ll lower mine, and we’ll talk.”
Cold onyx eyes glared.
“Your parents sent me. This is about Micah. Ignore the bystander. This is not about you.”
He canted on his heels and lowered the pole.
She took a deep breath. “Okay. Roberto, I need you to put the pole on the ground. You with me? Then I can lower my gun.”
With wary eyes, Roberto knelt and placed the pole on the ground.
She lowered her gun. Her heart raced, sweat dripped down her neck, and her shirt was soaked. She kicked the pole, sending it clanging heavily on the cement. “We’re going to go back into the Jiffy Lube, and we’re going to have a nice conversation. Got it?”
Roberto cocked his chin begrudgingly.
She jerked back down the alley. “Okay, let’s do it.”
Eyes hard and chin jutted, he walked past with a warning sneer.
Roberto Zapata may have clues, conscious or otherwise, that would help fill in the jigsaw puzzle about Micah and Hettie. But guys with rap sheets were tricky. This could go either way. He could clam up, or he could decide to be helpful. She needed to exert just enough authority to impress but threaten. She holstered the Glock and followed at a distance.
11
Lea Peck left her desk on the eighth Floor of Jacob J. Javits Federal Building in downtown Manhattan, rode the elevator to the first floor, and stepped outside into the afternoon air. Taking a deep breath of city air, she rolled her neck to dislodge the kinks, stepped out from the overhang, and walked slowly to the corner. High kick knee bends pressed thighs to chest and stretched the gluts. At the corner, she grabbed her left knee and rolled her leg out to stretch the adductors. She repeated the stretch on the right.
She felt the eyes of the guards near the lobby. They knew her. This was a regular routine every two hours. The ad stretch got ’em every time. It’s a free country, cuddle cakes, so you take a good long stare at my swag while I exercise my rights to exercise. Lock a cheetah up in a cage for too long and they lose their fight.
She’d been digging into Hettie Van Buren’s social media. The search was tedious and unrevealing. The girl posted the same damn things every damn day: some repost from an earnest environmental activist group—Worldwildlife Fund, World Resources Institute—about some damn depressing state-of-the-world shit, followed by a funny rep
ost of a random joke. Please. Only rich folks had time for that. During the last year, Hettie sporadically posted a photo smiling with the formerly delicious Micah at a fancy restaurant somewhere. Nowhere in the posts, the back chats, or the likes did Hettie so much as peep with any personality. All happy, all the damn time. Please.
Lea didn’t do social media. That was for civilians. She knew how much data was collected, scrubbed, used, and sold. Ain’t no damn corporation was gonna get rich off her activity data. No, sir.
She crossed the street and took off at a high-speed sprint. Clunky black earrings that read Queen bounced against her jawbone all the way to the end to end of the block. She pressed a finger to her neck. The sprint had barely registered a heartbeat. Time to go back to work.
On the second floor, Lea Peck strode under the bright glare of fluorescent lighting and past rows of white lab tables surrounded by robed technicians. Machines whirred, and the space smelled of formaldehyde and singed hair. Because of its size, the New York field office contained its own forensic lab. For most jurisdictions, evidence was transported to the FBI Lab in Quantico, one of the world’s largest crime labs with warehouse-sized rooms and hundreds of scientific experts. But the New York field office had an exponentially large number of high-priority, fast-moving cases that needed immediate initial diagnostics. The kidnapping of Hettie Van Buren was one of those cases.
At the far end, Lea found Becky Turnball staring down various pieces of evidence dispersed across a long counter. Cardboard boxes were stacked up near her feet. “Hey, Becky.”
“Lea Peck. How ya doing, kid?”
Lea wagged her head. “I am not complaining. We’ve got a high roller case thumping, my car is still running, and for lunch I had a sushi burrito from The Works. I’m all in today.”
Becky laughed. “Big case is right. Didn’t this come from Fontaine direct?”
“Indeed.”
“Red carpet treatment.”
“Indeed. Listen, if I go missing, I want this lottery treatment rolled out for my sorry Louisiana Baptist ass.”
“I hear that.”
Lea leaned over the counter, surveyed the wares and focused on a slice of carpet covered in dark blood. “Where’s his body?”
“On the way to Quantico. But we won’t need it. It was one clean shot through the chest.”
Rows of photos were lined neatly into a grid that displayed the body of Micah Zapata as he was found, sitting awkwardly on the floor, his back against a white wall, his head tilted, blood spray behind him like a splatter art from a local fair. There was no visible clown ink to match his friend’s tattoo.
“Any tats?” Lea asked.
“Nope.”
Lea crooked her head past the photos to the toiletries. Advil, toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, deodorant. Normal guy stuff. “Anything in the bathroom?”
Becky swabbed a coffee mug. “Nah, the bathroom’s clean. No hidden stuff, no drugs, no nothing.” Her voice turned conspiratorial. “Check the last section at the end of the counter.” She hooked her head to the far right.
Lea sidestepped to look at three photos—each a shot of a mangy shrub from different angles—next to a sealed evidence bag scribbled with a black Sharpie “Zapata. External.” Inside was a Sturm Rugger 9mm. What the fuck? Was that a gun in the bushes?
Lea glanced at Becky. “You match this?”
Becky looked up slowly. “Yup.” She wagged eyebrows.
“They left the gun?”
“Threw it in the bushes.”
What kind of Keystone fucking crook drops a gun? “Prints?”
“Yup.” Becky turned back to the mug with a smile. “Already sent them to Quantico.”
“Holy shit.” If they are able to match the prints, they could swoop in on the killer kidnappers and grab Hettie Van Buren in lightning speed. It was potentially a huge break.
Becky smiled to herself. “I was gonna call you when they come back. My guess, a few hours.”
“Holy shit,” Lea said before whistling her way out of the lab.
Back at her desk, an email from the cell phone forensic expert popped into her inbox. He would have pulled everything from Micah’s phone: calls dialed and received, text messages, address book contacts, photos, and videos. She opened the photos and videos first. There were 1,342 photos. Lots of Micah with Hettie. Lots of Micah with his mom. Only a few appeared to photos of friends, but that was normal—guys typically don’t photograph friends. There were a lot of stylized shots of meals. Micah appeared to have been a bit of a foodie. Or a bit of a poor kid who dropped into a pot of butter with a rich lady who took him to high-end restaurants.
She closed the photos and opened his cellphone history. Micah had regularly texted with four people: his mother, Hettie, a friend listed as Raul, and a second friend named Mark. These conversations had been active as recent as Sunday with short updates. They all appeared normal. where to meet?, omw, 5 minutes, kisses. He and Hettie texted a lot of I love you. Xoxo. Lea sucked her cheek. It was a lot easier to love a minted lady than a poor girl.
A month ago, one conversation stood out. Micah and a guy named Toro had a twenty minute call. After, they had exchanged eighteen text messages.
Toro had started the text conversation with, Bro, we need to talk.
Not now, Micah had replied.
I’m telling you.
I can’t now. Got lots on.
Bro, big $$$ on table.
Yo, I can’t.
You know anybody can?
No.
How bout yo brother?
R aint’ got no $
How bout yo lady?
Step off. Serious.
Just sayin. Need asap. Tick tock.
FO. He meant fuck off.
Will cut you in 40%.
FO. Leave me out.
Bro, we know about your lady.
FO.
Lea reread the conversation. She scanned Micah’s call history Toro’s number. Prior to this exchange, Micah had not spoken to Toro in over twenty months.
Uh, hmm. Now we’re getting somewhere. Correction. Now we’ve arrived somewhere. A smile tickled Lea’s lips.
12
Inside the Jiffy Lube office, an ancient cash register fought for space with dirty papers on a decrepit desk. A credit card machine collected dust near the cracked window. Chained to a hand-made shelf, a small twenty-inch television blared a Spanish game show. A haze of oil and gas hung in the air.
Roberto Zapata stood near the desk, feet wide and arms crossed. Tattoos climbed both arms and disappeared into short dirty sleeves only to emerge and crawl up his neck. He growled, “What’s up with Micah?”
“There’s been a missing person reported.” Dom stood in the door frame. “It’s your brother’s girlfriend. Hettie Van Buren is missing.”
Roberto blinked.
“I went to check Micah’s apartment. I’m sorry to tell you this, but I found his body. Micah’s dead.”
Roberto’s eyes widened, and his jaw tensed. He blinked repeatedly.
Roberto was displaying all physiological characteristics of shock as the brain digested alarming information. It meant he had nothing to do with his brother’s death.
He cleared his throat with a quick cough. “How?”
It was the most common first question of innocent people. She said, “He was shot.”
“Where?”
“In his chest.”
“When?” He held his body extremely still.
Tough guys learned to contain their body movements as self-defense in dangerous environments. “I found him about four hours ago. I’ll will know more later tonight, maybe tomorrow.”
“No. When was he popped?”
“Best guess is twenty-four hours ago.”
He shook his head and blew out both cheeks.
The news was a bombshell, tough guy or not. She shuffled back to give him space.
“You talk to my parents?”
“Yeah. I was over there just now. That’s h
ow I knew to come talk to you. Do you have any ideas about who would want to hurt Micah?”
“I got nothin’ to do with this,” he said quickly.
Involvement with Feds was not a normal occurrence for guys like Roberto. She nodded.
He craned his neck. “I’m telling you, I got nothing to do with this.”
“Yeah, I get that. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to find out if you know anyone who might have a grudge with Micah?”
“No.”
“Any ideas where I should start to look?”
He sniffed. “No.”
“Your parents mentioned Micah had some friends from high school, maybe some tough guys?”
He glanced up and to the left, playing the scenario out in his mind.
Eyes dart left when retrieving memories and to the right when creating new scenarios. Roberto was taking this seriously. He was trying to help her.
“That was a long time ago,” he said.
“Okay, what about more recently? Any gang affiliations in Micah’s life now that you know about?”
“Not that I know about.”
“Anybody maybe come round looking for money? Did he owe anyone?”
“Nah. Doubt it.”
“He get in trouble lately? Gambling?”
He sucked his cheek. “Nah. He don’t gamble.”
“Drugs?”
He snapped long loose fingers against each other. “Nah, he been clean a long time now.”
“How often did you see him?”
“Every few months?”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“A few months ago.” He glanced away.
“Where?”
He wouldn’t look at her. “At our parents.”
“What did you talk about?”
He closed his eyes. “Nothin.” He held his eyes closed a second too long.
Eye blocking indicated avoidance. It was a baseline point of reference. Roberto didn’t like the question. “Was it just you two and your parents?”