by Ronnie Allen
Frank admired her unique hiding place, staring at her cleavage. Nick hadn’t flinched.
Has he seen this act before?
“Here knock yourself out. While we’re waiting for the warrant, I’d like to go through Frank’s files, if that’s okay with you.” She looked at Frank and then the dolly.
Frank shrugged. “Sure thing.”
“I’ll call for the warrant.”
“Wait, Nick. Before you go, what are your thoughts about AriellaRose, Frank?”
“Did some kinesiology testing on her. No muscle strength in her arms or legs. Doesn’t take care of herself at all. No way in hell could she drag a body, even if she had help.”
“Show me what you did.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded. “Yes. I want to get a complete picture of her.”
“And I thought you wanted to get your hands on me.”
She scowled at him.
Nope. Not the response he wanted. “Okay. Take off your jacket.” He moved his chair away from the table, leaned forward with his arms bent at the elbow. He extended his fisted arm to Sam and grinned. “Did this with her, having her dangle her feet off the bed. Grab my fist and try to pull it down.”
She removed her jacket and put it on the back of the chair. “Is this a dare?”
Her clingy top worked for him. The woman knew how to turn a man on. It was instant with him. He held his breath for a second, surprised at his own reaction. Yeah. He definitely meant his grin to be a dare. “Hey, you asked me. Show me what you got.”
Sam wrapped her hand around his fist, as much as she could wrap around. Their size difference was huge. She pulled, hard. Maybe he moved a few centimeters.
“That’s it? Okay, but AriellaRose couldn’t budge me.”
“I would have expected that.” She grabbed on with both hands and tugged. He moved a few more centimeters. “You’re a brick wall.”
He laughed. “Stand up.” He pushed back in the chair and stood up. He couldn’t wait to stand. His hard on made him uncomfortable to say the least. Oh man, this woman had an effect on him. Maybe Jen did send her down from heaven. He stood with his feet apart and put his palms out facing her. “Push against my palms.”
“You did this with her?”
“No. Didn’t let her out of bed. Tested her leg strength, though. Having her push my hand up and down at her ankles. Couldn’t do that either. Her breathing tightened so I didn’t push it. But you are a different story. Push.”
Sam stood opposite him placed her palms against his. “Okay, big shot.”
“Wow. You are tiny.”
“I am not!” Sam pushed into him as hard as she could, using her full body. She twisted to the side to add momentum, as if he were a heavy bag.
He didn’t move an inch. “Detective, I need to get you into the gym.”
“I work out like crazy in the gym. I do kick boxing. I was the best in my class in the academy. So bring it on, Khaos. I can compete with you, big time, in the gym. Name the time.”
Nick laughed through this entire display. He put his hands over his mouth to conceal the permanent grin. It didn’t go unnoticed by either of them.
“What, Nick?” Frank dared him to respond.
He knew what his colleague thought. He had discussed Samantha with him. Nick told him to go for it. So did Withers. So did Loo. He didn’t have to approach the Loo. Rojas had told him to get it on already the first night when she had entered the conference room. He did make it clear to all three of them that he wouldn’t have a real relationship again, with any woman, until Jen’s killers were behind bars, or preferably, dead. The heartache of another woman being in jeopardy over him would destroy him. He had to stay well and in one piece for his son.
He certainly knew he wasn’t great at hiding his feelings. After meeting Sam, he must have shouted his readiness to the world. Rojas saw the change in him immediately. He transformed from sullen and dead from the neck down, to alive and ready. The only one who didn’t know he was attracted to her was Sam. Relationship, no. Sex, yes. Will Sam do the casual thing?
“Nothing.” Nick retorted.
Yeah, right, nothing. Frank turned his attention to Sam. She probably wondered where his mind went for a minute. “Compete with me? Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, put your hands on my chest and show me what ya got.”
Nick got up, pushed the chair in, and shook his head before he left the room.
She hesitated. Why, Frank couldn’t figure out. Then she placed both hands on his pecs. She pushed. He felt the heat. The vibration. His body steamed up within a few seconds. Heat radiated from his crown to his toes. He laid his palms on her upper back. More heat. She had to have felt it.
“You have great energy,” Sam said, looking up at him. “Do you do Reiki?”
She looked at him as if the positive connection he had waited for had been made. He’d take what he could get. “Yeah. Level two.”
“Me, too. Never had time to go for master.”
“It’s nice. Feel it?”
“I’m getting drenched. Yes, I feel it. It’s very nice,” Sam panted.
He wrapped his arms around her, caressing her frame. “Oh, man. I haven’t had a Reiki treatment in a long time. So you are going to give me one.”
Sam smiled. She answered without skipping a beat. “You got it.”
“Good, we’ll do nude Reiki.” His grasp around her held tight. She didn’t try to release it.
“Nude Reiki? Um, never heard of that,” Sam teased.
Oh yeah. She was ready. “Just made it up.”
***
AriellaRose plugged in her phone and sat on the edge of the bed as she made her call. She trembled, clicking the keys. She had been calming down since Tattooman started her on insulin, but that fell by the way side after reading the article. Hopefully, they didn’t know she was friends with Leonardo. That would be all she would need.
“Hey, Arie, where the fuck are you?” Emma demanded.
“You’re never going to believe this. I’m in the hospital.”
“Still? I drove by like you said, but you weren’t there. How the fuck did that happen?”
“When we went to the precinct to talk to them about my dad, there was a shrink there. He saw me wheezing and having a hard time breathing. He was old. Had to be old. He had that old-fashioned doctor bag. I couldn’t believe it. He checked me and said I had pneumonia and he admitted me. They said I do. He’s giving me a hard way to go.”
“How long are you gonna be there?”
“Haven’t a clue. And to top it off he put a cop outside my door.”
“Why the hell did he do that?”
“I sort of tried to escape, but he caught me.”
“Arie, that’s not good.”
“Tell me about it. I’m dying here. I need you to bring me my stuff.”
“Uh, I don’t have much left.”
“Don’t shit me, Emma.”
“I’m not. You probably haven’t heard. Leonardo got busted. DEA.”
“Yeah. They’ve been watching him six months. Read it in the paper that shit detective brought me.”
“Yeah. That’s not good. You gotta get out of there.”
“What aren’t you telling me, girl?”
“I was driving by yesterday to get an oil change and saw a DEA guy climb up on a ladder to remove a surveillance tape. Shit, Arie, you, me, Meredith, and Rachel will all be on that tape. A lot.”
***
Sam had sorted piles of forensic reports onto the conference table, thinking about their placement carefully. She then tossed the empty cartons into the corner of the room. Frank re-entered the room, carrying bottled water and lunch containers. He stared at ten stacks of varied heights of folders spread across the six-foot table. “Tell me. Where the hell did all this come from?”
“I’m a visual learner. I printed out everything on the flash drive. What did you bring?”
“Water, obvi
ous, and chef’s salad. I’m gluten-free.”
“Oh. Me, too. Thanks!”
He had to shuffle folders around to find room for the containers. “You slept here last night?” He was being half snide, half teasing.
Sam matched his tone. “Stop moving them. I have them in order. And no, I came in very early. Half is what Withers gave me.”
Frank pulled over his chair. “Okay, cool. Didn’t need everything. We’ll look at it all and decide what we think will be useful. We focus on that.”
Sam didn’t want to upset him, but she needed to make a point. “Um, how has that worked for you so far? In two years.” He slumped back in the chair. A despondent frown replaced the smile. She sighed. “And I have to review all of it to decide what to focus on. I didn’t go through anything yet. Each stack has something different. Okay, I numbered them. One and One A. Jen is the single number. New cases, number and letter. One lists the gangs and their precincts. The tallest stack. You guys interviewed over fifteen hundred gang members, validated ones.”
He perked up in the seat. “You know what ‘validated’ means?” he asked, taking a forkful of salad.
“Yes, I do. Confirmed by the police to be a gang member, not a wannabe, or fringe member, in case you want to test me.”
He smiled. “How do you know about gangs?”
“Taught in Brooklyn for ten years before joining the department. Had a lot of children whose parents were in gangs. Almost every day, they’d bring in fights that started in the projects and ended up in the classroom for us to clean up. Then I spent four years in juvie. A lot of gang action there.”
He nodded, lips compressed.
“You’re easy to impress. And also about a thousand crew members and their sets. About five hundred of them go to your gym. Not so many from Brooklyn, though.”
“We eliminated them.”
“All of them?”
“My gym members. The five hundred with their families and closest gang ties.”
“Why?”
“All right. My guys appreciate the opportunity. Love working out in the gym. Learning respect for themselves and others. There are over three hundred gangs in the city, about ten to fifteen in Brooklyn. That’s where the case ran cold. Those guys don’t make the trek into Harlem. Don’t have any beef with me getting involved in their turf. In Manhattan, Queens, Bronx, when I went out with Withers and the Gang Intelligence Unit, they spoke to us. Chased every lead. With me present, they’d talk. With only Withers and the cops, it was wasted. Did get them to come in and take polys. All came up clean. Forensics led to the Bronx. Text message led to the Bronx. Each gang uses their own lingo for weapons, kills, general communication. There are thousands of gang expressions. Went through them all with GIU. “
“The techie stuff is so easy, though, to mislead.”
“Not with our lab guys. New York City has the best forensics labs in the country. Our IT can get into everything. Every bullet was put through IBIS for identification and possible match to a gun. It has better odds than AFIS for matching fingerprints to an individual. Everything led to the Bronx.”
“What about Staten Island?”
“Same as Brooklyn. Narrow search.”
“What do you have?”
“Bullets, their casings. Reports showing their lands and grooves. Some residue did hit Jen. About five feet away. It’s a thirty-eight caliber from a Smith and Wesson revolver. No weapon. That’s what we’ve got. Period. Six bullets from the same gun. Shot erratically. Only one bullet hit her, the fatal shot. Went through a bag of groceries into her stomach. The fourth shot. But they didn’t have the control to stop.”
“You said ‘a text led to the Bronx’? You got a text message, personally?”
“Yeah. On my NYPD-issued phone. Not my personal one. Never give out mine. If a kid’s in crisis, they can text me. Got one text saying, “Got the biscuit. I’m hungry.”
“Excuse me?” She lifted the edge of the cover of her salad container and, not looking at what she was doing, she popped it open and the salad jumped onto her lap. “Oh crap!” She scooped it up with her fingers. “What does that mean?”
“A biscuit is a gun. Hungry, they want to shoot. If they know me, they know my diet, and I wouldn’t eat that, so it was interpreted as a personal warning. The next day Jen was shot. No time to do anything. Told Jen not to go out of the house. She had completed two tours in Iraq. Proficient in handling weapons and she carried. I managed to get her a concealed permit, because of me, and her going into suspicious areas. But she couldn’t miss work. She was an ER and trauma nurse, and the surgeon needed her for this one. She left the hospital at ten a.m. and went shopping to buy what she needed for my birthday dinner.”
Sam sighed and reach out to grasp his left hand. He put his right on top of hers. Just for a moment. Then they released.
“Yeah, princess. She was killed on my birthday. It sucks. I know. She was shot as she was walking to her car. Open area. No cover. The shopping bags were up to her neck. From how she fell, she didn’t even have time to take her own weapon out of her holster attached to her bra. My only blessing was that Frankie wasn’t with her.”
“I’m so sorry, Frank. What did they find?”
“They did find the origin of the text, located the last owner of the phone. No phone, no owner. He had been in Rikers for two days prior to Jen’s murder. He said the cops took his phone at his arrest. His wife came to the precinct to get his belongings and they wouldn’t give anything to her. That’s the law. Then his phone disappeared. They thought she snuck in to the property room and stole it. Have no idea how she pulled that off. The wife then moved out of the city. FBI tracked them to North Carolina. Father and phone owner’s wife, dead. Overdosed two weeks apart. It was found not suspicious, nor a cover up. No phone found in thorough searches of their property. Feds spent months on this one lead. That phone has probably floated down to Florida in the Atlantic, by now. What are the other folders?”
“The second group, Jen’s crime scene photos and photos of the other gangs are here.” She put her palm on the second pair. “A cover page noted that all the scenarios were put into a database. No match.” She moved her attention to the third pile. “These two are interviews with Jen’s friends and colleagues. The thinnest folders with the least documentation. Are you positive, and I mean a-hundred-percent positive, that this is gang related?” She paused for his response.
“Everyone feels it is. The thirty-eight is the cheapest bullet. What gangs could afford. No one would want Jen dead. If it was a professional hit, they wouldn’t have missed five times. Gangbangers do not have gun training. They hold the gun up and shoot. That’s why so many innocents get killed when gangs go after each other with guns. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
“No one IDd the car?”
“No plate. Vehicle never found. Probably went straight to a chop shop out of state. Every chop shop in Brooklyn was investigated.”
“Could it be anyone that you put away where your testimony got them a stiffer sentence?”
“Went through every arrest they called me in to profile and their families.”
“Any prints on the bullets or casings?”
“No. What are these two folders?”
“These are you. The cases you were profiling at the time of the murder. And these go for a couple of years before. Any from Brooklyn?”
“A few.”
“Tell me.” Her gaze remained peeled on him, taking in his every word. She wanted to solve this case. He was a good guy and he deserved closure.
“Hospitalized two kids--well, not kids, nineteen and twenty three, separate cases for drug-induced psychosis. Both murder cases. One was high on crystal meth, one on another hallucinogen. The nineteen year old stabbed a homeless man to death and the twenty-three year old, a hooker. Their families were happy they got a hospital sentence rather than prison. The vics had no families that could protest. Usually when I get called in, the defense wants hospitalization
and they really believe it’s what’s needed. If the prosecution has enough evidence for incarceration, and the defense knows that, they don’t need me. The defense knows better than to try. I don’t hospitalize lightly. That’s why all my cases have been eliminated.”
“Any Brooklyn gang members you threw out of the gym?”
“Now back to gangs?”
“I need to know every possibility. So?”
“Not thrown out. But if they come, they have to do the work. I push hard. Some quit. Always give them the option to come back when they’re ready. So the door is never closed.”
“Okay. I’m going to go through all of this. And I hope you don’t mind if I call you at three a.m. if I have a question.”
His eyes hurled daggers. “Don’t you dare call me in the middle of the night. I hardly sleep as it is since Jen’s murder.”
“But I--”
“Okay, sorry. I know you want to help me. It’s just that I’ve been living with disappointment for the past twenty-five months. Call me whenever. Even in the middle of the night.”
CHAPTER 16
AriellaRose lay in her hospital bed, head turned toward the window. The chipped and rusted security bars interfered with her avenue view. However, the blaring ambulance sirens, pulling into the emergency room entrance, did make it through her window. It was constant. There was no way for her to block it out. The shrill noises made her tremble. She put her palms up to cover her ears. Not even closing her eyes would carry her to another place. She tried. She focused. Her mind wouldn’t move to her fantasy life. She was stuck in the morbid present against her will.
She fingered her hair covering her ears. Yuck! She needed a shampoo and a trim. Rachel better be available as soon as she got out. This woman had skills. The new short doo she did for herself was cool. Even in the perfect shade of blonde. She loved Emma’s new short Afro, too. It was shit that Rachel couldn’t go to hair-styling school. No one could know she existed, any longer.