Killer Curves

by Christa Wick

  Shit, how had I missed that?

  Behind me, Craig cleared his throat. I saw his arm thrust forward. His knuckles brushed for an instant against Dante’s before he addressed me as an afterthought. "So…uhm, I’ll call you as soon as something comes up with the witness. Okay?"

  I turned my back on both men, waiting for Craig to leave before I started filming the closet’s interior. When he was gone, I glanced at Dante. "So, you know each other?"

  Definitely another thing I shouldn’t have missed.

  "We've tossed a few beers back. It’s cheaper to be a police booster than to run full security at all the sites." He pulled the pallet from the cubby when I gestured for him to do so. "Craig’s only been off the force about two years. I recognized his name immediately when you offered the card this morning."

  That made me pause. He had already known Craig Diamond before he came to my office, but he had still wanted to hire me. What did that mean?

  Nothing, I told myself and focused on the scene. It meant absolutely nothing -- less than jack shit. Even in Masonville, my name had more weight than Craig's.

  I aimed the camera at the pile of blankets. "Peel those away."

  There was a Coke can between the layers and Dante reached for it.

  "Shit, don’t touch it!" I kneeled down and started describing the can out loud for the camera's microphone. "You see how it’s bent here and the hole where it’s bent?"

  I pointed, still not touching the can. "And this ashy residue around the hole?"

  "What’s that?"

  Motioning for Dante to be patient, I turned the camera off. With all the nests he must have found, I was surprised he had no idea. Of course, as the boss, he probably only heard reports of the nests. He wasn't the one to actually find and drive out the squatters or clean up after them. Multi-millionaires didn't do those types of jobs. Men like Ray Epps did or the men in his crew.

  "A makeshift pipe," I explained. "Probably for smoking crack given the smell of the blankets."

  A scowl crossed his face at the mention of drugs, reminding me that there had been problems in his family.

  "What do we do now?" he asked.

  "Crane warned me that the prosecutor won’t send the crime lab back if I turn anything up. He’s probably right -- I haven’t met one yet who would."

  The scowl deepened, his voice turning rough. "You aren't suggesting we do nothing--"

  "No," I assured him. "We film it, I call it in, and, after the prosecutor says no, we bag it and send it for testing at an independent lab."

  That seemed to calm him. His face relaxed and he nodded at the can. "Testing for what?"

  "Everything. Prints, chemical analysis, DNA if it ever comes to that." I put the camera down and whipped my hair into a ponytail. "You never know whose DNA is hanging around the scene. I had this one case--"

  "Reynolds."

  "Yeah, Reynolds." Pulling my cell phone out, I glanced at Dante. Reynolds had been one of my smaller Miami cases -- not something a quick internet search last night would have pulled up. I remembered the clippings he had -- the paper folded and worn. Their aged appearance suggested he'd looked into my career long before my homecoming article appeared in the paper three months ago.

  Why? He had dumped me two weeks before our wedding day and hadn't spoken to me again until this morning. Scrapbooking my life after wasn't the behavior I would have expected from someone who had treated me so cruelly.

  Knowing there could be no sensible answer, I pushed the question to the side and flipped through my notepad until I found the prosecutor's name and number. Getting Corbin on the phone, I explained who I was and what I had found.

  With a complete lack of euphemisms, Corbin told me exactly what I could do with the can. The man was as explicit as he was loud. Glowering, Dante reached for the cell phone but I quickly shut it off.

  "Did he just tell you to…with…" His throat strangled the rest of the sentence as his pulse danced in the hollow of his left temple.

  I blinked, shocked at the protective flare of outrage shimmering in his eyes. I reminded myself it meant nothing -- Dante didn't like men swearing at women even if he was fine with jilting them right before their wedding day.

  Huffing, I shoved the phone into my jacket pocket and pulled a sealable plastic bag and permanent marker from the camera case. "Focus, Serrano. We’ll take the can and Alex’s attorney can motion the court."

  Ignoring his continued anger, I labeled the bag then turned the camera back on, carefully re-identifying the can and bagging it. With that done, I opened the folder with the witness’s statement Craig had left behind. I flipped through it. The guy had been down on the pallet when he saw Alex leave the building.

  My nose crinkled. The floor inside the closet was only slightly less filthy than the blankets. I looked around the hallway. There was a fifty gallon garbage bin with a discarded newspaper from that morning on its lid. Probably the patrol officer’s reading material while he had waited for the forensics team to finish up.

  I grabbed the paper and spread it out on the closet floor and then laid down with the camera in hand. Approximating the witness’s line of site, I looked down the hall through the viewfinder.

  "Move." I waved Dante to the left. "That’s not right."

  "What do you mean?" He stepped in front of me, blocking my line of sight again.

  "No, I mean…" I pointed at the door with the crime scene tape. "Go stand in the doorway then walk to the front entry and stop. Don’t turn to look back until you get to the front doors."

  He did as I asked and then came back. "Now tell me why I did that."

  It wasn’t a request, but I made him wait. Placing the camera on the floor just inside the closet door, I crawled out. "Give me your jacket."

  His arms crossed his chest again and his head was lowered like a charging bull. "Tell me why--"

  Knowing I couldn't afford to lose another skirmish with Dante, I mirrored his stance. "Give me your jacket and get down there with the camera."

  Retreating, he stripped the jacket off and handed it to me. "Then you’ll tell me why?"

  "No." I put the jacket on, getting lost in his scent all over again. "Then I’ll show you why. Now get in there."

  I repeated the path Dante had walked from the threshold of the crime scene's door to the building's front doors, and then returned to the closet. Taking the camera from him and motioning him out of the cubby, I rewound the footage to the start of Dante’s trip.

  "Now, Alex would have been wearing the same kind of boots as you are, yes? And even if he wasn’t, he'd still be about as tall as you are in yours, right?" I had noticed at the jail that the kid definitely had a few inches on his dad.

  Dante nodded.

  "Now, here’s you." It took less than a minute to run the film. "And here’s me, what do you see that’s different."

  He picked up on the dissimilarity immediately. "The row of mail boxes -- they don’t block the heron when you’re wearing the jacket."

  "Which also means the witness shouldn't have been able to see Alex’s face when he got to the door." I shoved the mattress back into the closet. "But the statement says he saw both the logo when the killer stepped out of the room and Alex's face when he reached the front door."

  The weight that had settled on my chest that morning started to lessen. The kid would get out on bail and, with a little luck and a whole lot of reasonableness on the prosecutor's side, the charges against him would be dropped at the preliminary hearing. Then it was good-bye Dante all over again.

  "This is good, right?"

  Hearing the healthy dose of optimism in Dante's voice, I nodded cautiously. "I still want to come back tonight and look at things in the same lighting as the time of the crime, but this and the residue on the Coke can should pretty much gut the witness’s testimony."

  I switched memory sticks in the camera, made sure it was off, and handed it and the folder to Dante. "Hold this."

  I reached into the camera bag
and pulled out a mini portable hair dryer.

  Leaning against the wall, Dante gave me a once over and smiled. "Your hair looks fine, Liv."

  I was glad he was feeling hopeful about Alex's chances, but I didn't need his mood so lightened he started flirting. Even knowing he wanted nothing more than to keep me working the case, I didn't need the distraction. I could still feel where his hand had cupped my breast that morning, could still taste his kiss.

  I cast a sour glance at him. "I can’t begin to tell you how much I missed that droll sense of humor."

  Returning to the door to the manager's unit, I turned the dryer on and pulled out an ultra thin, smooth band of steel with a rounded tip. As the door tape started to heat up, I worked the band of steel up under an edge. Jerking my head at the lock, I called Dante over. "I need this door opened."

  He hesitated in pulling the key ring out. "Liv, that’s police tape."

  I cocked an eyebrow at him.

  "How’s it going to affect Alex if you break it?"

  I pulled a roll of matching tape from my bag, an involuntary grin cracking my face open. "Now, don’t you wish you’d listened to me and let Craig stay instead?"

  "No." Dante unlocked the door.

  When he moved to enter first, I put a hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him back. A crime scene -- particularly this far in -- was no place for a civilian. As stoic as I knew Dante to be, there would still be blood. High summer, the smell of death would be stronger, too. His senses would be quickly overwhelmed. Then he would step someplace he shouldn't or, worst case scenario, I'd have to peel him off the floor.

  I pulled plastic footies from my bag and slipped them over my shoes. "Give me the camera and stay here."

  Surprising me, Dante obeyed. He waited just outside the door and looked over my shoulder. My stomach turning on itself, I didn't even realize how close he was until his chest brushed against my shoulder blade. Camera rolling, I turned the light on and stood in the door's threshold for a full minute, picking the path I would walk through the crime scene.

  My gaze immediately jumped to the dark bloodstain in the center of the room. The floor had a slight tilt to it away from the door down to the opposite wall. Based on the stain, the blood had run thick around Ray's shoulders and head instead of pooling closer to his wound.

  Contrary to most television shows, there was no chalk outline contaminating the scene. But two white index cards had been left on the floor, each folded in half so that it was tented. One clearly marked the position of Ray's head. The other probably marked the murder weapon.

  A meter from where Ray's body had last laid was a large opened tool box with its top tray on the floor next to it. There was a stack of boards about four feet high next to the box. More rows of salvaged hardwoods were stacked against two of the walls, with marble and granite tiles arranged along the other two. In each corner stood a fifty gallon barrel, its bent and twisted contents throwing back a copper shine.

  Filming as I moved, I ducked under the police tape and took small, careful steps over to the second index card. Someone had written hand axe in black Sharpie.

  "Craig got someone in the coroner's office to talk. Read his notes back to me."

  "It says a single axe blow to the right shoulder. Tentative C.O.D.--" He stopped and looked up at me, his brow quirked.

  "Cause of death," I explained and waited for him to continue.

  "Bleed out." He stuttered over the word and wiped at a trickle of sweat running down his forehead. "Approximately thirty minutes. T.O.D. estimated at eight P.M."

  Dante's voice faltered. I looked back to find that his eyes were closed. He was suffering. His friend had been killed a few yards from where he stood, dying for thirty minutes in his own blood, and his son was in jail for the murder.

  I squashed the urge to return to him. He’d insisted on being here and I wasn’t going to do anything to lessen his pain. I could -- probably. Deep down, he was still the same man I had fallen in love with two decades ago. I knew enough of his triggers to soothe him, but I didn't owe him that. I owed him only a week of my time -- time I shouldn't have agreed to.

  Looking away from Dante, I skirted the blood to the stack of wood. "That tool chest?"

  "Ray’s." His voice was raw as he answered. "I recognize the Daffy Duck sticker on the side."

  Daffy Duck. Feeling the inevitable sense of loss that comes with getting to know the victim, I frowned. Trying for the moment not to think about the dead man who had chosen the unrestrainable duck as his personal mascot, I walked over to the toolbox and filmed it.

  "Should there be an axe in here?" I asked.

  When Dante didn’t answer, I looked back at him. He was staring at the black sticky blood on the floor. I repeated his name and he looked up. "Did Ray carry an axe in his tool box?"

  He shrugged. "Probably. Foreman’s box usually has everything in it. Everybody has to buy their own box and tools and Ray’s been with me about ten years."

  "You said Ray and Alex fought earlier on Friday?"

  "That’s what Alex and a couple of the guys said. Ray lost it and threw a punch at Alex. Alex blocked with the piece of wood he was holding. Guys jumped between them before it could escalate."

  "Over the daughter?" Again, he was transfixed and didn’t answer me. "Dante, Ray threw the punch over the daughter?"

  He nodded, a fresh burst of anguish tightening his face. "Ray thought Alex was slumming."

  I closed my eyes and saw an image of an angry father -- not Ray but my dad. Slumming was exactly what he had accused me of when he found out the engineering student I wanted to marry didn’t even know the name of his own father and was, at best, a first generation American. Ray had been worried instead that his daughter was running with a rich boy who would dump her without a second thought once summer was over.

  Forcing my focus back to the present, I opened my eyes. I didn’t like interrogating him like this, but I was starting to get a feel for what might have happened and didn’t want to lose it. "What are the box and tools worth?"

  "Replacement cost, at least a couple thousand new." He turned away and appeared to be studying the mailboxes on the opposite wall, but I knew better. "From a pawnshop, maybe six hundred. Less on the streets where no one is going to ask if it’s stolen."

  "Seems like Ray would have taken it with him at the end of the day."

  "Likely -- but he was only working this site and the room's locked until he or I get here." Dante was leaning against the mailboxes, his arms crossed in front of him and his head against the metal facing. "I make all my crew buy their own equipment. First couple of years, I didn’t and about twenty thousand in tools needed replaced from loss or theft."

  I crossed under the tape, put the camera down on the floor, carefully shut the door and smoothed the tape back in place. "Can you lock this back up?"

  He was slow in returning to the door, slow in locking it, and he looked two shades paler than when we had first come in. I put my hand on his arm. "Come on, let’s go out front."

  "No, Liv." He tugged me closer. He bent his neck until our foreheads touched. The contact sent a wave of nostalgia washing over me. There wasn't a hot burst of need rushing down my spine or a flush warming my breasts, just a slow squeezing of my chest and the heart inside as I remembered how loved I had once felt in his arms.

  "What are you thinking?"

  I looked up at him, unsure what he was asking.

  "When you’re in there, Liv…looking at that, what are you seeing?"

  Right, the case -- the only reason he had looked me up. The question had nothing to do with how I felt in the circle of his arms. "Dante, I don’t want--"

  "Please. Remember, my son, my friend." He broke contact long enough to grab my shoulders and lightly squeeze before he wrapped his arms back around me. "What do you see in there?"

  Slowly exhaling the pain away, I closed my eyes and traced Ray’s last day in my mind. I saw the fight with Alex, saw him leave the site distracted. He�
��d thrown a punch at a subordinate, at a boy who was dating his daughter and, maybe worst of all, was the boss’s son. He got halfway home and realized his tools were still back at the site. Maybe out of a job, he certainly couldn't afford to lose them and he had the keys to the building.

  "Ray realized his tools were still here. He came back, interrupted a thief or the thief walked in on him." I felt Dante’s relieved sigh against my skin and pulled back. I took a deep breath, centering myself. My loss was old, grown insignificant over time. It was nothing compared to what Ray's family and friends were experiencing.

  I swallowed, ran over the scenario in my head one last time and nodded. "That would be consistent with a single strike. Then the killer panicked and ran. If it had been a passion killing..."

  I trailed off. Dante didn't need that image running through his mind right then -- or ever. I crooked my head toward the double entry doors. "Let’s get out of here."

  Rubbing my shoulder, he nodded. "What’s next?"

  "I need to fill out an affidavit on the can so Crane can draft a motion for the court to order testing for prints and the chemical source of the residue."

  "Do you think they'll grant it?"

  "Probably not." Bending down, I packed my camera back into the bag along with all the other equipment still out. "That's why I need to contact a private lab."

  Gently grabbing my elbow as I stood, Dante kept me in place. His eyes bored into mine and his grip tightened. "You know he’s innocent, Liv. You know that now."

  All I knew for sure was how much Dante needed to hear that I believed in Alex's innocence. I shouldn't tell him. Truth and justice are unpredictable; the law offers no guarantees. I'd never given that comfort to a client and the contract I had signed meant I owed Dante and Alex my professionalism -- no matter how much I wanted to reach up and smooth the furrow from Dante's brow.

  Gripping both of my shoulders, he drew me close again. "Liv, you see it?"

  "Yeah, Dante, I see it."

  Chapter Three

  Out on the stoop, Dante’s mood slid from optimistic to disturbed as he locked the building back up.