by L. T. Ryan
“You’re not an idiot, Mitch.”
“Sure about that?”
“Wouldn’t let you work with me on this if you were.”
“Right, well, anyway, there’s time. And this case, it’s giving me another purpose, helping me feel productive. To be honest, my gut has been telling me something else.”
She raced up the on-ramp and merged onto the deserted freeway. “What’s that?”
“I’ll find what I’m looking for out here.”
She glanced over at me. The right corner of her lower lip tucked in.
“Not sure what that is,” I said. “But I feel like I’m gonna find it.”
She reached her hand over and placed it on top of mine. Her skin felt cool, like a silk sheet draped over me. She squeezed and held tight for a moment.
“I’m on your side, Mitch. I’m gonna help.”
I pointed with my free hand. “Braxton’s exiting.”
She gripped the wheel with a slight clearing of her throat. “That he is.”
“Same section of town as Liliana’s apartment?”
“No, that’s a good ten miles in the opposite direction of the hospital.”
“But that’s where the assault took place, right?”
“I can only guess.”
Once on the city streets, Bridget closed the gap between us and Braxton. She remained tight to his tail until we reached the precinct. We circled behind the building and parked near a metal door. Braxton led us inside and took us to a small break room where a pot of coffee awaited.
“It’s dumped and a new pot is brewed every hour, so help yourself.” Braxton opened a cabinet and grabbed three mugs.
“Gearing up for a long night, huh?” she said.
Braxton shrugged. “Gotta be ready for that every night.”
“The two a.m. wake up call.” I shook my head and chuckled.
“I know, right,” he said.
“That’s the worst, isn’t it? I mean, you lay in bed and process all the shit from the day, because dropping it on the doorstep at five-thirty when you get home isn’t enough.”
“No,” Braxton said. “It’s still there. Swirling. Eating at you.”
“That gnawing in the gut.” I patted my stomach. “I think it’s a natural state now.”
Braxton nodded and offered the first genuine smile I’d seen from the guy.
“But two a.m.,” I said again. “Been asleep for an hour or two, three if I’m lucky, but never really in a deep sleep. I have never felt rested when they’ve woken me at two. And, man, the next couple days are rough.”
He laughed. “Makes you wonder why we do it at all.”
“Because of the reason we’re getting called out in the middle of the night. The victim. No matter how bad my day’s gonna be, it’s nowhere near what they went through.”
I held his gaze for several seconds following that. Had I earned his trust? Was he about to let me in?
“Something sparks an idea during questioning, feel free to speak up, Tanner.”
Bridget finished doctoring her coffee and turned to face us with a slight smile. After twenty hours of go-go-go, she looked a little disheveled. Wayward strands of hair poked out. She’d wiped off most of her makeup. Her top two buttons were undone, and her shirt untucked.
Braxton headed out. “All right, follow me.”
Maybe it was the fact I’d been up for a solid twenty-four hours. Perhaps the day spent with Bridget had loosened up feelings I’d stuffed down into that hole in my soul. But a smile lingered as I watched Bridget move across the room to the door.
She stopped and looked back at me. “What are you smiling at, goober?”
I shook my head, my chin lowering to my chest as I did so while my gaze dodged hers. “Just thinking of something Ella Kate said to me when I dropped her off at Momma’s place.”
“Tell me later?”
“Sure.”
“Cool.” She waved me toward her. “Let’s go intimidate this punk.”
12
There were four interrogation rooms at the end of a hallway, labeled A, B, C, and D. Our guy was in B. We crowded around a monitor displaying the feed from the room.
There were three metal chairs and a small table butted up against the wall. On top of it was a candy wrapper and half-full bottle of water. The walls were bare, painted some shade of off-white that looked like piss in the fluorescent tube lighting.
Our suspect sat back in his chair, eyes shut, arms folded, legs stretched out. Not his first time in an interrogation room. So who was he?
“What do you know about this guy?” I asked.
Another man I hadn’t yet met carried over a folder and handed it to Braxton. Inside were several mug shots, going back a decade, when the suspect must’ve been fifteen or sixteen.
“His name is Anton Moore. That’s probably a quarter of his arrests,” the other detective said. “He’s done time down in New Mexico and in Nevada.”
“At least he’s regional,” I said.
Braxton chuckled as he read through the guy’s arrest history. “Sorry, Brad, this is our new FBI friend, Bridget Dinapoli and Mitch Tanner, from Philadelphia PD.”
“Philly?” Brad stuck his hand out. “My grandparents lived in Wildwood, New Jersey.”
“Get out,” I said. “We spent two weeks there almost every summer when I was growing up.”
“We might’ve been on the beach or on a ride on the boardwalk at the same time.” His smile beamed. “Oh, and it’s Brad Prevost.”
Braxton looked unimpressed. “You two wanna take this reunion to the IHOP down the street?”
“Sorry.” Brad raised his hands in surrender and went back to his desk.
“We’ll be bringing him in later,” Braxton said. “Anyway, this guy is your basic piece of trash. Had a chance, blew it. Been in and out of jail since he was a teen. Picked up a few trades, had good jobs. Easy money wins out though, eh?”
“Guess so,” I said. “Do we have a connection between him and the Delgado kid?”
Braxton shook his head. “Not to my knowledge. Maybe we’ll get that out of him.” He started for the door.
I put my hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Another thing.”
“What is it?”
“Manny mentioned he wished his mom and older sister were still alive. Any clue what happened there?”
Braxton shrugged. “Hey, Brad, can you dig into Delgado’s background? Get me any arrests, even if he wasn’t booked, and find out about his family. Seems he told—“
“Mom and sister dead. Yeah, got it.” Brad spun in his chair and hammered away at a keyboard.
“Course you do.” Braxton shook his head. “Rookies and transfers.”
“We could all do without them,” I said.
Braxton moved into the hall. “You guys watch the feed for a few, then Bridget, I want you to come in first. Gonna play the FBI card early and really freak this guy out.”
The only sound in the room for the next thirty seconds was Brad’s keyboard going clickity-clack like a fully automatic machine gun. The other detectives had to love him for that.
“Getting pretty chummy with the local Five-O, aren’t you?” Bridget eased into the chair and wheeled it back to the wall.
“You know honey draws more flies,” I said.
“No, shit does.”
“To each their own.”
“Really, Tanner, what gives?”
“I may need these guys. We may need these guys. On this case, and to help me find Robbie. We’re in the right area, yeah?”
She nodded, said nothing.
“I do right by them, maybe they put my son’s picture out there. Get a tip line going, or something like that.”
“I can help, if you’ll let me.”
“Marissa’s not right in the head. That’s why this is happening. She’s not a bad person.”
“She’s committed a crime.”
“I’m not reporting this. Definitely not to the FBI.”
<
br /> “Do you want her to get away with this?”
“I want to deal with her when I find her. No one else. Understand me?”
She slumped forward in her chair with her thumbs hooked onto the arm for support. “That’s the only way I can do something officially. You know this.”
“I do. And that’s why I want to take my chances with these guys. Maybe you can pressure them a bit, too.”
At that moment, Braxton looked up at the camera and nodded.
“Guess that’s my cue.” She rose and scooted past me on her way out of the room. I reached for her elbow. She stopped, looked up at me. One of those wayward strands of hair tickled my cheek. “Yeah?”
“Be good in there.”
I sat down in the empty seat and watched the scene on the monitor. Brad continued to pound away on his keyboard. Guess he hadn’t found anything yet.
“Any sound on this machine, Brad?”
He hurried over and tapped a few keys. The video feed enlarged to take up the entire monitor and sound now piped through. Bridget was asking the guy some basic questions while building rapport with him.
“When’s last time were you down at the shore?” Brad asked.
I had to think about it for a second. “Damn, well, I think it was two summers ago. Took the wife, kids, my mother, and my best friend Sam brought his family. Rented a beach house and relaxed, visited the boardwalk. Looks nice again. You know how rundown it got.”
“I heard.” Brad sat at the desk across the walkway. “Been a good twenty years for me. Once my grandparents passed…” His eyes misted over a little. “Anyway, my folks saw little point traveling across the country after that, and since I started on the force, well, I use my time off for other things. There’s so much to do out here. Always been an outdoors kinda guy.”
“Seems to be the way it goes.”
“Yeah.” He gripped the arms of the chair and pushed himself up. “I’ll let you get back to your livestream there.”
I watched the man amble off and wondered what had happened to his grandparents. Two decades was a long time to still get worked up like that. For a lot of folks, the lucky ones, at least, losing a grandparent is the introduction to the fragility of human life. Maybe they had a pet that died as a kid. An icebreaker, to put it crudely. But there’s something about seeing that lifeless, wax museum’esque body in a coffin, lips pinched up in a soothing smile, face relaxed, that makes a person realize all we’re doing is inhabiting bags of flesh until our time comes.
Dragging myself back from the depressing hole I was digging, I returned my attention to the interrogation feed. Braxton’s posture had changed significantly. A few minutes prior, he was leaned back, slouched to the side, same as the suspect. Now, he had assumed a power position and was pointing at Anton Moore, who leaned back and was smiling. But the sound had cut out, so I had no idea what had transpired.
Before I could figure it out or even ask for help, Brad said, “Whoa, Tanner, you gotta check this out.”
I glanced over the top of the monitor at him. He was waving me over. I scooted the chair around the desk and pulled up next to him.
“What you got?” I asked.
“Delgado’s mom and sister.” He pointed at the article he had pulled up on his screen. “Couldn’t find anything in our records at first, but now I see why. Last name was different.” He pointed at the second paragraph in the article.
Gloria and Janessa Rodriguez.
Mother and daughter.
Hit and run.
“Please tell me you have access to this case file,” I said.
Brad alt-tabbed to the right program and entered a search. A few moments later, just over a half-dozen records appeared. Four for Gloria. Two for Janessa. One for both.
“What kind of trouble had they been in?”
“Let’s look.” Brad clicked on Gloria’s case files. Two were domestic, both reported by her, against two different men. Judging by the names, Manny’s father was one. The other guy I didn’t recognize, but I jotted it down since it was more recent. Jordan Sears. Maybe the thug in the interrogation room would recognize it. After that, she had two possession charges for marijuana and later meth. The daughter, Janessa, had a couple of misdemeanors for shoplifting and drunk in public. Typical shit, nothing to get too worried about.
The hit and run was a different story. There were two witnesses, both of whom recanted their stories within a few days, even though no suspect was ever arrested.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” Brad pointed out the above fact. “Must’ve been someone with strong connections. Think that means the women were targeted?”
“Or in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I scanned through the rest of the report. “Do we have access to their statements?”
Brad clicked around but found nothing else. “Not electronically, but I know we’ll still have paper records of this case in storage.”
I stood, ready to head out of the room. “Lead the way?”
Brad tempered my expectations. “Easy, man. Those are downtown. Don’t think we can leave just now.” He gestured toward the desk I had been sitting in. “Let’s take it up with Braxton when you guys are finished.”
“Yeah, we’ll bring him up to speed in a few.”
Brad scooped up his buzzing phone. “Speaking of… Braxton just texted to say he’s ready for you.”
13
The kid across from me was named Anton Moore. According to his birth certificate, he was a man at just over twenty-five years old. But he looked like a frightened child when I asked him what he knew about Gloria, Janessa, and the mystery man from the second domestic dispute report.
“Who the hell is that?” Anton tried to recover from his mistake, but the tell was too strong, and he was too immature to pull it off.
“Jordan Sears.” I watched his face for signs he was searching for or concocting a story.
He gritted his teeth, clenched his jaw, all in an attempt to look tough again. “Ain’t never heard that name.”
“You sure?”
He wiped his finger against his nose and glanced away and said nothing.
“Tell me about you and Janessa, then.”
“Why you think there’s something to tell?”
“I dunno. You two are about the same age. And you’ve known Manny for a while, right?”
He nodded, but you could see the confusion on his face. No one in the room knew the fact they were friends, and that included me. I took a chance, and Anton confirmed this beating was not a crime of opportunity. It was personal. Now, we had to figure out why and over what.
“So when you saw Manny out—“
“What’s this about Manny?” Anton Moore looked as though he were ready to explode from that chair and pin me against the wall. He had the size and heft to do it, too. If there was one area the young man had experience, it was probably throwing down.
Bridget and Braxton exchanged a glance, then she leaned in toward me. “Let’s take a walk.”
I’d overstepped my boundaries. Not uncommon. I excused myself and stepped out into the hallway. The door opened again a moment later, and Braxton joined us.
“Hadn’t brought up the attack yet, had you?” I asked.
Braxton shook his head. The aggravation on his face dissipated. “That’s okay. We were getting there. Figured you’d bring it up, and I wanted to see his reaction when you did. What’d you and Brad find out, though? What sparked the stuff about, who was it, Janessa?”
“Like I mentioned, the kid told us he wished his mom and big sis were still around to help with his younger sisters.”
Braxton nodded, his head falling further back each time until he stared straight up at the ceiling. “There’s a connection between Anton and the older sister. And this Sears guy?”
“Wasn’t sure there was with the sis,” I said. “Took a chance. We’re gonna need more info on this Sears guy. First I’ve heard that name. You?”
He nodded.
“Gamble
paid off,” Bridget said. “Even if we can’t connect him to Manny’s attack, he might have info on the mom and sister. By the way, what happened there? Did you find out?”
I filled them in on the domestic violence reports, as well as each woman’s record. And then I told them how they died.
“I can get us access to those statements,” Braxton said, pulling out his phone. He swiped through his contacts and then drifted down the hallway as he placed the call.
“Good job in there,” Bridget said.
“You think Anton had something to do with the attack?”
“Witnesses place him close by, but he had an excuse for being in the area. We were hoping he’d pigeonhole himself with a lie, but the alibi sounds pretty airtight with at least four people who can corroborate for him. Doesn’t sound like any footage is gonna turn up, so unless Manny tells us otherwise, I think Braxton is gonna let him go soon.”
I shook my head.
“You’re not convinced,” she said.
“No, I’m not. But it’s not my call. I’d monitor this guy, though. Who’s he hang out with? Who’s he report to? That’s the bigger question in my mind. I’m telling you, this guy knows something. Someone else further up the chain has control over him. Who? It sounds crazy, but might it be this Sears character?”
Bridget nodded. “I could see it. The moment he was presented with something he couldn’t easily bullshit his way out of, he folded.”
“Guy doesn’t want to go back to prison. It hardened him, but it struck him in another way. Real tough guys can probably see right through him. Take away his physical strength, he’s got nothing.”
Braxton wrapped his call up and walked back over. “We should have the file by one or two p.m. I’d hoped sooner, but apparently there was a water line that burst down in records, so they had to move a bunch of stuff to a warehouse outside of town.”
“Lord, might take them two hours to get over there the way this place is laid out.”
“At least,” he said. “They can scan and send us anything immediately relative and important, but I want the entire file. There’s something here. I don’t know how all this is connected, the Lavelle’s, Liliana Marin, the Delgado kid and his mom and sis, and now this guy. My gut says we’re about to blow something wide open.”