“Stop! Police!” someone shouted. This time, Mason obeyed. He put his hands up and paused. Right behind him, I drew my weapon and took a stance.
“Don’t shoot!” he cried.
I was in about the worst position possible. If he behaved badly and required lethal force to subdue, the bullets from the officers’ guns would be headed straight at me where I stood, six feet behind him. But there was little I could do. Hopefully, the officers wouldn’t be trigger-happy. Being killed by friendly fire was a crappy way for a cop to die.
The officer in charge, pointing his weapon along with several other officers, yelled, “Put your hands on your head, get down on the ground! Now!”
Mason paused, and slowly took his hands down, as though preparing to get down on the ground, but then he shoulder-rolled to the side and reached under his jacket in the back. Someone shouted, “Gun!” and I dove for the pavement. I knew the shooting would commence and I sure didn’t want to be on the receiving end.
The criminal took off to my right and didn’t get more than three feet before the shooting started. He bucked and twisted as bullet after bullet riddled his body. They whizzed over me and I kept my head down. Something hot flew over my calf and left a trail of searing pain. I was hit. Was there more to come?
Finally, the guns stopped going off. I rose, discovered that my calf was bleeding and my footing was unsteady. I wasn’t scared, but, as I looked over Mason’s corpse, I was annoyed. So many questions unanswered. But it looked like the killer was now off the street. All that was left was the cleanup.
Angelica peeked around the corner of the open kitchen door and rushed out to me, sticking her shoulder under my arm to give me support I really didn’t need. It must have taken about everything she had left, because I saw her grimace with the effort. “I’m okay,” I told her, pushing her gently aside. “You need to be looked at. You might have a broken rib or something.”
“You’re bleeding,” she said, pointing and shouting for a paramedic.
I looked down and saw the sticky red sauce all over my chest and realized it must look like I’d been shot. I put my hand on her shoulder and shook my head. “It’s sauce. He threw a pot of sauce at me. I’m okay.”
“But your forehead, your hands. Are you burned?”
“I’ll survive,” I said, limping toward Mason’s body. Cops were standing over him. One said, “He didn’t have a weapon. I don’t know what he was reaching for.”
Clearly, this was a case of “suicide by cop.” But it had yet to be proven. That was Angelica’s and my job.
“You’re shot!” she called, rushing after me. “Damn it, Striker! Medic!”
“Angelica, you need it more than me. You’re wheezing.” I put my arm around her and let her over to a squad car, where I made her sit in the shotgun seat. “Now you sit here until a medic can see you. That’s an order.”
“Asshole.”
I was glad to see she hadn’t lost her snot. I heard the paramedics’ siren as they pulled into the parking lot behind the restaurant. They rushed out of their vehicle and raced toward the body on the ground, until Angelica yelled at them to come look at me.
It was a crease in my calf. Nothing that a few stitches and bandages wouldn’t fix, but they insisted I go to the emergency room. Angelica, still showing pain after the attack, went with me in the back of an ambulance.
It was over, though no one had come away unscathed. Three women had been killed, a little boy’s mother had been taken from him, both Angelica and I were wounded, and Tamika was in the hospital in serious condition. Puzzle pieces were left unattached, and some might never be found.
Chapter Ten
Angelica and I had a lot of work to do to tie up the loose ends of the case. The hardest part was finding Walter Mason’s last address. For that, CSI had to sift through his car and match evidence found there. Both Angelica and I were thrilled when a match came up after only ten days. She raced right into my cube to tell me the news.
“Did you see?” she exclaimed. “They found him! They found him!”
I hadn’t checked my email. “Got his address?”
“Yes!”
“Excellent. Let’s roll.” I grabbed my hat—my coat was unnecessary as the weather had warmed.
Angelica squeezed my knee once we were settled in the repaired official car, and I remembered our last night together. It was too long ago. We’d both needed to recover from our injuries, so I hadn’t pressed myself on her in the interim. And, of course, there was still the dilemma of being both professional partners and lovers. Drawn as I was to not giving up a minute of our time together, I was still aware of my shortcomings and the volatile nature of my reactions to seeing her in danger. Oddly enough, watching her recover from injury so well had helped. She hardly complained, although the bruises on her chest had to be quite painful. I had seen her grimace when bending over a few times. My blood pressure rose with each of those moments as I wished we could put Mason behind bars for a good long time. Dying in a firefight was way too humanitarian an end for him.
But, Angelica had recovered, and recovered well. She was resilient, not some delicate flower, despite her petite size. I had to keep that in mind. If I could do that, then being partners and lovers would be okay. I wanted it to work out and losing either of the ways we interacted was unappealing, to say the least. When I thought back on the anathema I’d felt toward having a partner, I wanted to smack my head on a nearby hard object. It was fortunate that I’d given her a chance, despite my misgivings.
I started the car and we proceeded out of the police lot. “Angelica,” I began. “Are you feeling up to coming over for dinner tonight?”
“Yes!” she enthused, then her voice sobered. “Ahem. I mean, what did you have in mind?”
I gave her a look that had her blushing. She licked her lips, and I was so tempted to pull over to the side of the road and yank her into my arms. But, of course, that couldn’t happen. There was the case, the propriety, always something. My hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“Oh,” she said, her voice soft. “Well… I dunno.”
My heart skipped a beat. Had I read something into our relationship that wasn’t there? Had something gone terribly wrong? Had I been too inattentive, not insisting that we spend our nights together? Fact was, I was trying to be considerate of her health. Had that backfired?
“You don’t know? Has something changed?”
“I thought maybe you’d lost interest. I’ve enjoyed our time together… I’m confused, I guess.”
“Stop being confused,” I told her. “I want you. I just wanted to make sure you were feeling better before we made love again.”
“Is that what we did? ‘Made love,’ I mean. It wasn’t fucking for the sake of scratching a mutual itch?”
Yes, it was an itch that needed to be scratched, but there was a lot more to it than that. But, given her hesitation, how much should I admit? I have an ego, like the next guy, and getting shot down by a girl who had captured my heart would be a knife in the guts. “I hope that’s not all it was,” I ventured. “Was that how you felt about it?”
I glanced over and saw a frown come and go on her face. “At first, yes I did.”
“At first?”
“Yeah, but you’ve kind of grown on me, Jase Striker. I’ve been missing you.” She squirmed. “You probably think I’m a sucker now.”
“Do you think so little of me? I’m not an asshole, Angelica.”
“I… uh… I’m sorry. I just thought, since you didn’t even kiss me lately, I thought that maybe you’d lost interest. Or that you’d made a decision that we were work partners only, and nothing else.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Will you stop answering me with questions? That is such a fuckin’ annoying thing.”
Maybe it was. I realized that my queries were based on a certain amount of self-protection. I wanted to pin her down before I admitted anything. It wasn’t fair to her. I should, as a fa
mous comedian once said, “Take a fuckin’ chance!” Maybe Remington Steele wouldn’t do it, but I could.
“Sorry.” I took a deep breath and stepped out on a limb. “I don’t want to just be partners, unless we’re using that word to describe a relationship both on the job and off. I want to have it all. I hope you feel the same way.”
I could feel her body lighten and release tension as she sat there next to me. “Yeah. I definitely do. I thought you’d never come around.”
I smiled at her then looked back at the road. We were almost at our destination. “Dinner tonight and something delicious for dessert. And I don’t mean carrot cake.”
“Woo-hoo! I love you, Jase.” She gasped and covered her mouth. “I mean… oh shit.”
I parked the car and turned, reaching over to pull her face close to mine. I took her mouth with all the enthusiasm I felt. I claimed her. She’d spoken the words I’d longed to hear from her and thought might never come to pass. She’d mirrored my thoughts about her. I seared her lips with hot kisses and loved her hands on my shoulders, in my hair. I was incredibly turned on, and if we hadn’t been in our police vehicle, I’d have drawn her into the backseat, even in broad daylight. Instead, I slowly released her and she settled back into her seat.
Her eyes went to the tent in the front of my pants, and she giggled. “Maybe we’d better just sit here for a few minutes.”
My turn to blush. “Yeah. Maybe.” After a minute passed, I realized that I’d accepted her words of love without telling her how I felt. I didn’t want to be a heel, and, I truly did feel strong emotion when it came to her. “Angelica,” I began, then cleared my throat. “Angelica, I love you, too. I want to make love with you tonight, and every night, if that’s possible.”
She took my hand. “Thank you.”
We sat there like that for a few minutes and then got out of the car to investigate the apartment building where Walter Mason had lived.
As we rounded the corner, we saw the CSI vehicles parked on the adjacent street. People were stepping out of their white overalls and booties, removing their hair coverings, apparently at the end of their investigation. We’d come at the right time. They’d have been unwilling for us to search the place before they’d gathered the samples they needed. We walked over to the truck and I spoke to the lead investigator. “Ready for us?”
‘Yeah,” he said, removing his white, puffy cap and revealing a half-bald head. “We got hair, carpet fibers—you know, the usual stuff. We also found around sixty, seventy thousand dollars-worth of crack and Ecstasy and nearly two-hundred-thousand dollars in cash. And you’re going to love what else we found.” He let that hang there, waiting for me to react.
I hated that kind of passive one-upmanship. “Yeah, what?”
He looked smug. I’d flinched first. “A bunch of rose bushes. White roses. I’ve got a sample and will run it against those we found on the dead women and I’m willing to bet we’ll have a match.”
It was great news. I gave him a nod of approval, a smile, and a fist bump. Turning to Angelica, I motioned toward the building entrance. “After you.”
“Ladies first, my ass,” she retorted, though she did precede me to the doors. I did not open it for her, however, as she reached out and swung it out without a pause. So much for gallantry.
The building lobby was large and luxurious, with marble floors and tasteful furnishings. I wondered how often the leather sofas and chairs were actually used by residents, who, after all, had their own apartments to retire to, but at the moment, several police officers and some CSIs were making notes on laptops in the seating areas. There was a buzz of conversation.
I was known to the officers in the lobby, so we were allowed up the elevators to the sixteenth floor, where apartment 1601 was located. The elevator was quiet, but a tinny voice told us when we’d reached the proper floor. We stepped out and went down the long hallway to the west end of the building. The luxurious appointments were evident in the hallways, and at the well-maintained front door to Mason’s place.
The door was ajar, so I pushed it open and we went in. There was a tiny foyer, and past it, a very large open, sunlit space, filled with white carpet and white furniture. The accents were chrome. Even the table-side lamps were white with white shades. Although the windows were covered with vertical blinds, they were open and I could see the balcony beyond. It was full of pots of roses, all blooming in profusion. They were gorgeous, and as we neared that part of the apartment, I could smell them through the partly open balcony doors.
We looked around for a while, and I have to say, although I would never have chosen a totally colorless theme, Mason had shown taste in the things in his space. Marring it was a closet full of drugs and drug paraphernalia. It was quite a stash, and not one a user would maintain. He was a dealer, much as we expected. It helped to cement witness testimony and was another nail in his—now unnecessary—coffin. The drawers in his bedroom were partially open, and I could see neatly folded socks and T-shirts. In his extra closet, there were jeans hanging neatly, along with dress shirts, and two pair of perfectly white sneakers on the floor. The man had been neat to the extreme.
I went to his desk and rifled through his papers. There were a bunch of old-looking records, one of which was his birth certificate, and another of which was a death certificate for a Trinity Mason. Her death date, compared to Mason’s birth date, indicated that Mason had been about five years old when she’d died. Cause of death was drug overdose. Mason’s father was listed as “unknown.” I rummaged around more and found some letters to and from the State of California, requesting adoption records. It looked like these were from Mason’s thirteenth and fourteenth years. He’d requested more information on his mother, and not much had been forthcoming. His own letters, returned as reference by the state, implored the administrators to tell him who his grandparents were. That was not allowed, however, although one person did say it was unknown. So Mason had found a dead end where his family heritage was concerned.
At the bottom of the papers was a photo of a young woman, perhaps seventeen years old, smiling, holding a blooming white rose. She looked carefree and her eyes were bright with promise. Mason’s mother, perhaps? There was a family resemblance.
It was sad, but lots of people had problems like his and didn’t become serial killers. Something about him had snapped. Maybe seeing all those women with pregnancies or little kids, addicted to drugs, working as prostitutes, had pushed him over the edge. Maybe he had memories of what that was like, and they haunted him. We’d probably never know for sure.
That was all our search yielded, but I made sure the CSIs picked up the contents of his desk drawers so that we could paw over any other records there.
We went back to the station and filled out the ever-present paperwork, but soon enough it was time to call it a day. I went to Angelica’s cubicle and put a hand on her shoulder. She turned toward me with a big smile on her face. “Ready?” I asked.
She typed a few more characters and with a flourish, shut off her computer. “Yes! I’ve never been more ready.”
* * *
We made a stop on the way to my place. I realized that since I hadn’t planned for my guest, I had maybe orange juice and a couple of eggs in my refrigerator. I don’t think I even had butter for the boxed macaroni and cheese in my pantry. So we stopped at the grocery store. I wanted to make our dinner fare a surprise for Angelica so I asked her to wait in the car. She agreed with a smile. I took that to mean that she liked surprises.
My culinary skills are rudimentary. I can grill steaks in the summer; I can whip up a box of pancake mix and serve the flapjacks with fried eggs; I can pour spaghetti sauce over pasta; and—the only thing I could actually assemble from scratch—I could make a killer seafood Louie. So I bought the ingredients, and some ready-made, heat-in-the-oven garlic bread and we drove to my condo downtown.
Although Angelica had seen the condo before, it was a haven to me, and I was eager to share that p
leasure again with her. And a lot of other pleasures beside. There were glass doors, leading to a tasteful anteroom, where brass mailboxes lined up neatly, but we didn’t stop to get my mail. Instead, we proceeded to the elevator alcove and up to my condo on the seventh floor—7C, to be exact.
I struggled with the groceries while unlocking the doors, and Angelica snorted and pointed out that she could have taken one of the bags, but I ignored her, macho beast that I am.
Angelica actually paused and looked this time, taking in the soft brown couch, the two upholstered gliding rocking chairs, the fireplace, and my large collection of movie DVDs. She shed her suit jacket, revealing a sleeveless white, form-fitted, silky blouse.
“Make yourself at home,” I told her. “Mi casa es su casa.”
I don’t know what she was thinking, but she got a very pleasant smile on her face at that. She approached the squishy couch, kicked off her sensible heels and curled up in a corner. She looked perfect, though I could easily imagine her there in her favorite pink hoodie and jeans. Angelica could wear anything in my home, or nothing, and I’d be delighted to know she was there.
“I’m going to get started on our dinner. Can I get you anything? I’ve got a good chardonnay in the bag, chilled and all. Do you want a glass?”
She snuggled deeper into the soft corner. “Yes, please.”
So polite. She was a contrast in rough versus smooth textures. “Okay.” I took my groceries into the kitchen and got busy.
When I brought her wine to her, she was resting her head back on the arm of the sofa. “Man, Jase, this is one life-sucking sofa.”
That made me laugh. It was coma-inducing, I had to admit. I handed her a remote control. “Watch some TV or a movie,” I suggested. “The news is on somewhere.”
“I hate the news. It’s so depressing.”
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