Soundbyte (-byte series Book 5)

by Cat Connor

  I needed to shake it off before I did something thoughtless. Another smile crept across my face as I watched Kurt straighten his suit jacket and flick beads of water from his shoulders. I’m sure it helped.

  “What are you grinning at?” Kurt muttered, looking left then right. “We lost him!” “Unrelated,” I replied. I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face.

  Time to focus.

  Kurt brushed more water from his suit. How he could wear a suit and tie in this heat was beyond me. I bit my lip but the smile kept coming. In a last ditch effort to cover the smile I covered my mouth with my hand and pretended to yawn.

  “Are we keeping you up, Conway?”

  “Yeah,” I replied and concentrated on the situation at hand. “It was a man we saw running away from the scene, yeah?”

  “I think so,” Kurt said.

  “The murdering thief went inside somewhere.”

  “Into one of the buildings?” Kurt said, staring back down the street.

  “There’s nowhere else.”

  “That’s a lot of doorways and buildings, and even more offices once you’re inside.”

  Lee ambled across the road and joined us.

  “He’s gone, I dunno how, but he disappeared,” Lee said. “Freaking Houdini.”

  “He must’ve gone into one of the buildings,” I restated my theory. We weren’t anywhere near a metro stop that I could see, so I doubted he disappeared via train. Doubting it and ruling it out were two different things. “Where’s the nearest metro?”

  “Which line?” Kurt replied.

  I shrugged. “Any.”

  “13th Street.”

  Of course. Silly me. We were between Metro Center on 13th and Federal Triangle on 12th. I scanned the area again, hoping he’d pop up somewhere and wave a white flag. A laugh deep in my mind echoed the folly of my thoughts. Our Unsub isn’t popping up. He’s running.

  “You think the Unsub took the Metro?” Kurt said.

  “I hope not.”

  Orange, blue, and red lines passed through the Metro Center, orange and blue through Federal Triangle. The Unsub could be gone for good. From the metro system, he could get out of DC and into either Virginia or Maryland. He could get to the yellow and green lines. He could take the yellow or blue line and go to Ronald Regan airport. He could take any line and connect with buses or pick up a car. If he chose the Metro, he could already be mist on the wind.

  In my mind, it was a fine red mist as a speeding train hit him.

  “Me too, but just in case I’ll get Transit Police to go over the surveillance video.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and made a call. I could hear Kurt talking to Transit but I wasn’t listening. I did hear him say he’d forward a photograph as soon as we received one.

  We hung around for a few minutes, watching the street for any sign of someone who looked like our man emerging from a building. Umbrellas in every direction. What a great way to hide, under a sea of umbrellas. The more mean-spirited part of me hoped for a gust of wind. Broken umbrellas upended in garbage bins along the streets always tickled me. My mind paused expecting to hear Rihanna singing ‘Under My Umbrella.’ It didn’t happen. I thanked the music gods for sparing me that horror.

  “Screw this, I need a coffee,” I said, trying in vain to hide the snarly mood that had crept up on me.

  “Strong black coffee,” Kurt elaborated while wiping moisture from his brow. He ran his hands through his sandy blond hair – water flew in all directions.

  “Good call, we’ll stop in at the Firehook on Columbia Square on our way back.” I bit my tongue before I asked if he could sing. The crazy was taking over. The dark masses were gathering. I hoped no one would shoot at me today.

  I walked in silence to the Firehook, ever hoping to see our Unsub ducking out of Metro Center. No such luck. Armed with a double espresso the silence continued back to the office. A mute me seemed safest. The rain stopped. I took the lid off my coffee cup to let the precious black liquid cool. The men talked. They went over and over the escape of the alleged thief-murderer. I sort of listened. My brain was trying to understand how he disappeared as he did. He was right in front of me, running hard, arms pumping. He dodged a group of people on the sidewalk; by the time I reached them, he was gone. Vanished.

  Maybe he slipped on a metro grating in the sidewalk and skidded down a storm drain? My mind went nuts with the storm drain thought. A balloon squeezed out of a drain opening in the gutter and floated away. A terrifying voice followed, “Want a balloon?”

  Pennywise.

  “Beep-beep, Ellie. They all float down here.”

  I tried to look away but everywhere I looked, I saw his hideous face and balloons. “Take your pick, E-E-E-Ellie.”

  Stop it, Ellie! Focus for God’s sake. I shook my head. Pennywise tumbled to the brink of the storm drain. I shook again. He slithered over the edge and was gone. Balloons drifted skyward. I was pretty sure our Unsub didn’t slide down a storm drain. Pretty sure a freaky clown didn’t pull him down one either.

  A balloon inflated and popped. I jumped. Coffee sloshed in my cup threatening to splash over the rim. A quick look over my shoulder told me Kurt noticed.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “A balloon popped.”

  The expression in his eyes changed from humor to confusion. “There was no balloon,” Kurt said.

  “Good,” I replied. “Must’ve been in my head.” I closed the conversation with a matter-of-fact tone and left it at that. Twice now someone has disappeared on the streets of Washington. My shooter vanished. Our Unsub vanished. I’m not a fan of coincidence. I tucked both thoughts away for safekeeping; something told me they were related in some way.

  The disappearing Unsub caused several real scenarios to come into play, other than the Metro one. He could’ve stashed a disguise somewhere. We were looking for someone his approximate height, weight, and gender. Would we have noticed a woman leaving any of the buildings in the vicinity? Depending on how cocky he felt, he could’ve sauntered right by us dressed as a woman.

  It entertained me that I imagined him as a woman. Not just a change of clothes, oh no, he changed gender. Atta girl! At least he didn’t become a clown.

  He couldn’t have just grabbed an umbrella and strolled away in the crowd?

  Another thought was that he never left the area. I fought the images of Pennywise pushing into my consciousness. He never left either. Fuck off, Pennywise, you don’t exist!

  Another balloon popped.

  My mind scrambled to gather the thoughts released by the balloon.

  The Unsub could have gone into one of the buildings and stayed there. Maybe an appointment. Who would think of committing a murder, robbing a jewelers, and then trotting off to keep an appointment with say, his accountant? If he arrived breathless, he could say he was running late. Or maybe he had time to chill in a stairwell and catch his breath for ten minutes prior to the appointment.

  Then there was a new scenario involving Pennywise the clown and me losing my mind. I shut it down fast. Took a long sip of my coffee and let something other than clown-based-terror free. What if he worked in one of the buildings? I wanted the jewelry store’s CCTV footage. If we had a picture we could ask around, see if anyone recognized him.

  Eight

  Bad Moon Rising

  It was a relief to be back in our building. I scanned the foyer, no clowns. Once out of the elevator, I hurried to my office, leaving Kurt and Lee to fill Sam in.

  I kicked my door shut. Before I could set my cup on my desk, my phone was ringing. Carla.

  “Hey, honey, shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “I am, just wanted to see if you were coming home for dinner.”

  “At this stage I will be. What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” she replied in usual teenage fashion. I’m supposed to use my motherly intuition and know what it is. Then she continued, “I want to have dinner – us, you know, family.”

  “
Sounds good to me. You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine, Mom.” Her words were almost swallowed by an impatient sigh.

  “Grandpa will be waiting for you after school. I’ll be home as soon as I can. You sure everything’s all right?”

  “I said I was fine!” she snapped into my ear. “It’s not me that gets shot going for coffee.”

  Ah, crap! I had nothing to say to that. She adjusted her tone before I could reprimand her. “I just want you to come home for dinner.”

  “Okay. I’ll do my best.” I’m not keen on making promises that I may not be able to keep.

  “Please, Mom … dinner tonight.”

  Her plea tugged at my heart.

  “I’ll do my best. Now I gotta change, I’m soaked. Be good.” I hung up and placed my phone and coffee on my desk.

  Fine?

  Not.

  Something was going on with her. How the hell did she hear about that shooting incident? As my child, Carla had every right to request my presence at dinner. We got used to being together while I was on leave for three months, then I went back to work and life went crazy. I felt I was failing her as a parent. She saw more of Rowan than she of did me, and he was a touring rock star. For a minute or two, I let images of Rowan float in front of my eyes. His smile. The way he flicked hair out of his eyes. The way he looked at me.

  I studied the image in my mind. That wasn’t Rowan. It started as Rowan but it wasn’t. The blue eyes looking back at me were Kurt’s. Oh, man. I batted the image away. With a sigh, I carried on.

  From the cupboard, I took dry clothes and changed. My wet clothes hung in the corner of my office, steaming, with my boots under them. The silence in the office deafened me for a beat before the whir of the fans from the computer kicked in and added a dull background hum. Anything was preferable to the constant replaying of Maria Nay in my head. Don’t get me wrong, I have Modern West on my iPod. I’m a fan. Just not keen on hearing the same song over and over, to the exclusion of logical thought.

  How did Carla hear about the shooting on Friday? Time to ask the all-knowing Google. I found a story on a gossip site. The headline was sensational, Rowan Grange’s girlfriend shot on DC streets. Someone from one of the stores in the vicinity gave an interview about how I was shot. There were few details and it didn’t sound like an eyewitness report. I suspected the person used information from one of the uniformed agents. I looked at how many times the story was shared over the various social media sites. Three hundred and fifty shares. There is no way Carla could have avoided it. Once again, Rowan being Rowan made life harder for me. Great.

  Sipping my coffee, I pulled up satellite images of the area and traced my route from the jewelry store to where we lost sight of the suspect, six blocks west. I leaned back in the chair and thought about the chase.

  Ten minutes later my email alert sounded. Sam forwarded me the CCTV recording from the jewelry store. As I watched the footage, I found a partial face. I cut the face and copied it to another program. I hoped to be able to run it through a few databases and maybe get an ID. I also sent a copy of the picture to Transit Police. It would help the Transit cops when they sat down and checked through the footage from the Metro Center. If they found him, they could track him through the Metro system. All was not lost if the Unsub took the Metro.

  I repeated that to myself and did my best to believe it. You’d think the number and variety of cops within DC would prohibit this kind of crime in broad daylight. Running through the streets draws attention. Chasing someone draws more attention, yet no one reacted except to get out of our way, and our guy disappeared. It was perplexing.

  Have people become that indifferent to their fellow man?

  No, it was raining, unseasonably warm, and more crowded than a usual day in DC. The week before spring break meant large groups of schoolchildren on supervised outings, plus the usual volume of tourists and people who work in DC, all coming together on various sidewalks throughout the city.

  Tourists, balloons, scary freaking clowns.

  I watched the footage five times but could not tell if he stole anything or not. The Unsub and the jeweler discussed something. There was much arm waving from Bleich, the jeweler. A heated discussion by the look of the body language. But it ended. The Unsub turned away first and took two steps toward the door. Bleich turned his back as if he were walking away. Bleich never made it to the other side of the counter. He was dead within a minute. Every time I reached the part where the suspect killed the storeowner, I cringed. It was one thing seeing the aftermath but quite another watching the life snatched from someone.

  Some sick part of me found that moment when life evaporated fascinating. Snap. It was quick. I slowed down the images, frame-by-frame, watching what the Unsub did. Did he come unprepared? No. Did he think the jeweler would hand over his jewels? I doubt it. Did he want us to think this was opportunistic? Maybe. Did he always intend to subdue the jeweler but it went wrong? No.

  I watched it again. This time without cringing, without closing my eyes. He’d been trained. Was he there to kill the jeweler? I considered the possibility that it was a hit. He’d killed like that before. It was fast and professional. Yet I had the feeling they knew each other. Why turn your back and walk away after what looked like a heated debate unless you didn’t consider the person a threat?

  It was time to run a quick background check on the jeweler. A few key strokes and quite a bit of information surfaced.

  The jeweler was a man named Sigmund Bleich. He was fifty-four years old. Married to Marika, with three grown children. Sigmund Bleich, as far as I could tell with a cursory background check wasn’t a known associate of anyone in the criminal world. He wasn’t just a jeweler. He was a diamond cutter. A smile crossed my lips as I read more and learned something. I’d always thought all people who carved, cut, engraved, gem stones were lapidaries. But not so, diamond cutters are diamond cutters. No fancy name for them despite the special skills they need. So, Sigmund cut diamonds. I imagined he also was a man with nerves of steel and a very steady hand. Without thinking, I found myself admiring the princess-cut diamond I still wore on my finger. Maybe it was time to take it off and put it away. Reflected light cast tiny butterflies across my desk. Not yet.

  How did a man like Bleich come across a cold-blooded killer?

  Using the mouse I scrolled through the pages churned up by Googling his name. In 1999 he cut a huge diamond. The Heathcote Diamond was reported as having an initial weight of four hundred and thirty-five carats before cutting which became four forty-five-carat diamonds, and a fifth diamond that weighed forty-eight carats after the cut. They were collectively called The Heathcote Diamonds. I struggled with that. It didn’t matter how many times I looked at the one- carat diamond on my finger I could not imagine something forty-five or forty-eight carats. Tallying up the total diamond weight I discovered there was a lot lost in the cutting process. As far as I could tell, the diamonds were never sold. They remained in the possession of Sigmund Bleich. There was a display in 2002 soon after the cut was complete and again at a prestigious jewelry-cum-fundraising event in Washington about two weeks ago.

  I picked up the phone receiver from its cradle and pressed three numbers.

  Sandra answered within seconds.

  “Has anyone spoken to Bleich’s family?”

  “Police have visited the family home but there was no one there.”

  “Let Metro police know we will handle it. There is something fishy about this whole case. I’ll take a drive out to the house. Do you have an address?”

  Sandra read out the address. I scrawled it on my desk blotter.

  “Thank you.” I hung up. I did some more searching and came up with both younger sons. “Ephram and Jonah,” I mumbled, looking at pictures of them on their Facebook pages. Identical twins. Neither of them was involved in the family business. Both boys were in college; Ephram was completing a doctorate in mathematics and Jonah was at med school. They were twenty-five yea
rs old. The older brother, Zachary, worked with his father, but was in London on a buying trip. That was a pretty good alibi. Where was Mrs. Bleich? I wondered.

  A photo of her came up in a search. Marika Bleich was an attractive dark-haired woman. She was involved in a fair amount of charity work; nice that she gave back to the community. I compared the photographs of her and her twin sons. It would be fair to say they favored their mother in looks.

  Marika was similar to Maria. I waited to see if the song would reappear. But no.

  Where was she? I surfed the net some more and discovered she was a lawyer who offered free legal counsel twice a week at an Anacostia community center. That’s where she was. It said on the website that she was available from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon on Mondays and Thursdays. That saved a trip out to her home. I checked the time. It was almost midday.

  I grabbed my jacket and called Sam. “Field trip.”

  “Meet you at the elevator,” he replied.

  I filled him in on the way down to the parking garage. The community center was twenty minutes away. We were blessed by the traffic gods, and nothing untoward happened on our journey. I’ve known it to take forty minutes to get to that side of town.

  Nine

  I Believe

  We found the community center without any trouble, it was a pleasant building without too much graffiti, in an area Sam and I knew quite well. Most people would think long and hard about venturing across the river to Anacostia and then run in the other direction. Not us. We’re all kinds of stupid. A smile flickered on my lips. It wasn’t stupid – we’d done some good things in Anacostia and made a few friends in the process.

  I looked around as I got out of the car, and wondered if I’d see any familiar faces. None was obvious on the street. I knew enough to know that our presence registered. The car alone would’ve sent whispers of five-Oh through the streets. I just bet not one of the kids whispering five-oh had ever seen or heard of the original Hawaii Five-0 police procedural drama series. I’d heard that the series was named in honor of Hawaii being the fiftieth state but I had no idea how five-oh came to mean police.