I had the hang of it now and was able to inch my head around enough to focus on the front without making myself dizzy and nauseous. Wish I could say the same for Dennis!
I had to take a break after about a half an hour and asked him to spell me. Talk about your basic disasters!
The goggles wouldn’t fit over his glasses. Dennis couldn’t see squat without the Coke-bottle lenses, however, so we angled the glasses on atop the goggles. Neither one of us considered the magnification effect that would have on the imagery. I got a good sense of it, though, when he let out a mind-shattering screech.
“Get away from me!” Flailing both arms, he battled an invisible foe. “Get away!”
I ducked one of his fists but the other plowed into the cup he’d set on the console. The dregs of his nonfat caramel cappuccino splattered all over me as I yanked off both glasses and goggles.
“It’s okay! Dennis, it’s okay.”
He stopped flailing and blinked owlishly. “This dude who attacked you and Sergeant Roth,” he said after a dazed moment. “Did you leave him with a world-class bruise on his chin?”
“Bruise? No, but he’s got . . . Oh, my God!”
Cappuccino dripping from my cheeks and chin, I whipped around and crammed on the goggles.
“Where is he? Where did you see him?”
“In the back alleyway.”
By sheer force of will I managed to get the whirling images under control and focused on the carport behind Annette Hall’s apartment.
And there he was! Capelli, or whatever the hell his name was. Bigger than life.
The birthmark looked like a small purple squash blossom as he rounded the hood of a dark sedan and made for the gate to her fenced backyard.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I still couldn’t believe it! Capelli, right in front of my eyes.
“Dennis, call nine-one-one!”
“I don’t have my phone with me,” he squawked. “Where’s yours?”
My heart hammering, I kept my head as still as possible to maintain focus and jammed my hand in my purse. I could tell from the shape of the instrument I pulled out it wasn’t my high-tech DARPA jobbie but the instrument Agent Blue Eyes had issued.
“I’ll make the call.”
Waving off O’Reilly’s attempt to grab the phone, I flipped up the lid and pressed the button that gave me a direct connection to Sinclair. The second he answered I shouted into the phone.
“He’s here! Capelli! I’ve got him in view as we speak.”
“Here where?”
“Casing the apartment of the caregiver for Diane’s kids! He’s at the back gate, for God’s sake! You need to alert . . . Oh, no!”
“What?” Sinclair yelled in my ear. “What’s happening?”
“The gate wasn’t locked! He’s in the backyard. Get someone here fast!”
All I could think of were the Roths bludgeoned to death in their own home. Tearing off the goggles, I wrenched on the door handle.
“Samantha!” Dennis lunged across the console to grab my sleeve. “Wait for the cops!”
“I can’t. This bastard’s already killed two people.”
I shook Dennis off and leaped out of the Sebring. Cursing my decision to park a half block away and rely on the NLOS system, I charged toward Hall’s unit. My blood thundered so loudly in my ears I didn’t hear Dennis behind me until I rounded the end of her unit and skidded to a stop.
They were both there, visible through the open gate. Capelli and Annette Hall. Clearly illuminated in the light streaming through the back door. Stunned, I saw that the arm Capelli had hooked around the woman circled her waist, not her throat. And she was shaking a finger at him.
Shaking a finger, for God’s sake! Like an elderly aunt or grandmother chiding a recalcitrant child. I was still rooted to the pavement in shock when Dennis huffed up beside me.
“Is that him? Is that the guy?”
“It’s him.”
“So wh . . . ?” Planting his hands on his knees, he bent over to suck air into his lungs. “So what’s the deal?” he wheezed. “Do those two know each other?”
“Apparently,” I forced out, still in shock.
Like bricks banging down on my head, the pieces fell into place. Hall moving to El Paso just a few weeks after Diane. Striking up a casual acquaintance at the playground. Letting drop how lonely she’d been since her husband’s death. Spouting that line about how Joey and Trish filled the hole in her heart. Encouraging Diane to designate her short- and long-term caregiver, with full legal rights over the kids.
Although Sinclair hadn’t mentioned it, I would bet everything I owned Diane had designated Hall as secondary beneficiary on her Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance as well. A nice, four-hundred-thousand-dollar bundle on top of what the kids might inherit from the Roths.
It was all planned, I realized with sickening certainty. Right from the start. If not by Oliver Austin, then by one of his sleazoid pals. And now, I saw with a leap of sheer fury, one of the players in this murderous game was about to get away.
Annette had handed something to Capelli. A key? A folded piece of paper? I couldn’t tell at this distance. He slid whatever it was in his pocket and turned to leave. The gate swung shut behind him. Hall went inside, closing the apartment door behind her.
“Where the hell are the cops,” Dennis said in desperation as Capelli approached the sedan.
On their way . . . I hoped! I knew O’Reilly and I couldn’t face the bastard down, alone and unarmed. But I could sure as heck delay him a few precious seconds by borrowing a page from Diane’s tactics.
“C’mon.”
Grabbing my still-huffing software guru by the arm, I hauled him back to the Sebring but thrust him aside before he could reach for the door.
“Stay here.”
“Why? What are you . . . ? Samantha, wait!”
Ignoring his panicky yelp, I jumped into the driver’s seat. The Sebring growled to life just as headlights speared through the night a half block away.
I doused my own car’s lights and let my foot hover over the gas pedal. The headlights grew brighter. When the sedan nosed out of the alleyway behind Hall’s apartment unit, I stomped down on the gas. Tires squealing, the convertible leaped forward. I had only a few seconds to mourn the sacrifice of my shiny new car before it broadsided the sedan.
I caught a glimpse of Capelli’s face snarling at me above the pale balloon of an airbag but didn’t stick around to wait while he fought his way free of it. Leaving the Sebring’s front end embedded in the sedan’s now-concave driver’s side door, I bailed and sprinted back to Dennis.
He was goose-eyed and mourning his own loss. “My laptop . . . My chess database . . .”
“Forget the damn database and run!”
We didn’t have to run far. Only a few yards before an unmarked patrol car screeched around a corner. Ruiz leaped out from behind the wheel, Comb Over from the passenger seat. A frantic Diane ejected from the rear.
“Trish and Joey! Annette! Are they okay?”
“I think so. Capelli didn’t go inside, just talked to Annette at the back door.”
“Talked to her?”
“Where is he?” Ruiz demanded while a shell-shocked Diane tried to process what I’d just told her.
I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. Ruiz spotted the cojoined vehicles and whipped out his semi.
“Stay back and let us handle this.”
They got no argument from me. I was more than happy to let them take it from here.
Much as I dislike Special Agent Hurst, I have to say he moves fast. Within seconds he and Ruiz were on Capelli like junkyard dogs.
Diane wasn’t interested in the drama unfolding down the block. Still trying to grasp the implications of what I’d told her, she grabbed my elbow and dragged me around.
“What do you mean, this guy talked to Annette?”
“Just what I said. They know each other, Diane. Annette and Capelli. He looped an arm around
her waist. She shook a finger at him.”
“What?”
“She chastised him like an irate mom. It looked like she was scolding him for something. Not finishing the job Dino sent him to do is my guess.”
“Oh, my God!”
Whatever her other failings, Diane doesn’t lack smarts. She made the leap instantly.
“They’re after the Roths’ money! All of them. Ollie. His so-called associates. Annette.” Fury blazed from every pore of her body. “That bitch!”
She spun on her heel and shot toward Hall’s apartment building. I panted after her, my breath rasping in my throat. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I sounded almost as out of shape as O’Reilly.
We dodged Ruiz and Hurst, who had Capelli out of the sedan and spread-eagle on the pavement. Ignoring Comb Over’s startled shout, I chased Diane down the alleyway to the Hall’s gate. Diane flew through it and wrenched on the back door. When it didn’t give, she hammered it with both fists.
“Annette!” The door rattled under her assault. “Annette, it’s me!”
I caught up with her in mid-pound. “Be careful. You don’t know what she’s . . .”
That’s all I got out before the door was yanked open. A startled Annette gaped from Diane to me and back again.
“What in the world . . . ?”
That’s all she got out before the savagely furious mother hauled back and let fly. Her fist plowed into Hall’s face with a resounding crunch. The woman crumpled and would have hit the floor if I hadn’t caught her. Despite her slender silhouette, she packed some weight! I sagged to my knees with Hall dragging me the rest of the way down.
Shoving past us both, Diane ran inside. I heard her footsteps pound through the kitchen, into the living room, up the stairs. By the time I wiggled out from under Hall and made it to the foot of the stairs, Diane had already started back down.
“They’re asleep. I left them until . . . Until . . .”
Her voice hitched as the fury that had driven her leached away. In its place came great, wracking sobs.
“Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh God!”
Sinking like a lead weight, she dropped onto one of the stairs and buried her face in her hands.
“My babies,” she cried, as broken and desolate as I’d ever heard her. “I can’t believe I trusted that woman with my babies.”
I hunkered down and wrapped an arm around her. Sobbing, she turned her face into my shoulder.
AS with the other incidents involving Diane, this one took a long time to wrap. In the process we collected quite a crowd of interested parties.
Sinclair and Paul Donati both rushed to the scene. As did a whole battalion of additional cops, investigators, special agents, a fire department emergency response team, EMTs, and bunches of curious neighbors. I’d contacted Mitch, who was on his way as well, and in a somewhat belated call to arms, Dennis had put out an urgent summons to the rest of FST-3.
While we waited for reinforcements, O’Reilly and I huddled on Annette Hall’s front stoop beside a thoroughly drained Diane. She’d left the front door open in case the kids woke up. She was praying they would sleep right through the wailing sirens and flashing lights. I hoped so, too, and didn’t envy her the job of telling two bewildered children that the babysitter they’d grown so close to was apparently involved in—or at least had knowledge of—their grandparents’ brutal deaths.
Annette Hall now sat handcuffed in the back of a squad car. I could see her pinched face peering through the rear window while the EMTs worked on Capelli. Evidently the side air bag had saved his upper torso from serious injury but the Sebring’s bumper had crunched his lower leg. Can’t say I felt much remorse over that.
A screech of truck tires heralded Sergeant Cassidy’s arrival. Noel must have been doing his usual three- or four-hour nightly workout because his hooded black sweatshirt clung to his muscled-up chest in damp patches. Eyeballing the investigators surrounding my Sebring, he jogged up the sidewalk.
“You okay, Lieutenant?”
“I’m fine.”
His gaze swept over O’Reilly, noted Diane’s slumped shoulders, and locked on me again.
“Dennis said something about the NLOS system and you crashing your car. Please tell me you didn’t try to drive wearing those goggles.”
“I didn’t try to drive wearing those goggles.” But that reminded me. “We need to retrieve the sensors, Dennis.”
O’Reilly, Cassidy, and I garnered some odd looks from the assorted investigators as we collected the little round disks. I tucked them back in their egg carton, thinking that I owed the inventor one heck of an endorsement. I’d have to come up with some creative prose explaining this second, unauthorized deployment of the NLOS system before I could forward said endorsement to Dr J.
Rocky didn’t help on that end when he and Pen arrived. Pen was in her usual layers of natural fibers topped by a down-filled vest that added beaucoup inches to her stocky figure. Rocky was in a world-class snit.
As Dennis had predicted, our test engineer was not a happy camper. Once he and Pen had assured themselves their team leader was still in one piece, Rocky expressed his feelings with some force.
“You can’t keep conducting these unscripted, uncoordinated field tests, Samantha.”
It wasn’t a test, but I could see he was in no mood to split hairs. I hung my head and tried for penitent.
“I know.”
“This is twice now you deployed the NLOS system without establishing proper parameters. Worse, we weren’t set up to capture the data transmitted by the sensors. It’s lost. Completely lost.”
“I know.”
“Then you also know you most likely invalidated the tests we conducted out at the site.”
I could only play sorry for so long.
“Tests you declared inconclusive at best,” I countered.
“That’s beside the point. They were conducted under controlled conditions with trained observers to record the results.”
“True, but did they bag an admitted murderer? Or his suspected accomplice?”
That deep-sixed the remainder of Rocky’s tirade. Lips thinned, he palmed his thin, sandy hair. “You’d better stress those results to Dr. J when you explain tonight to him.”
“Trust me, I will!”
Mitch pulled up at that point and provided a welcome distraction. Extremely welcome! Especially since his first move was to tug me into his arms to make sure I still had all my working parts.
His second move was to ask about Trish and Joey. He didn’t try to hide his relief when I assured him they’d slept through the whole incident.
Diane came in a distant third. I didn’t gloat. I swear I didn’t. But I’m only human. So I enjoyed that reaffirmation of his priorities almost as much as his hard, fast kiss? Get over it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WE were the lead story on all the early morning news shows. Diane. Her in-laws. Capelli. Oliver Austin. Annette Hall, whose real name turned out to be Holly LaRosa.
She really was a widow, only she’d lost her husband to a hit by a rival mob, not a heart attack as she’d told Diane. After that traumatic event, Dino D’Roco had taken her under his protective wing. In return Holly performed various small tasks for him. Like smuggling dope. And moving to El Paso to worm her way into Trish and Joey’s hearts in hopes of cashing in on their inheritance. For that I sincerely hoped she spent a long, long time in a prison jumpsuit.
I earned some mention in the media coverage, although it was pretty much as a footnote. The big story— again—was Diane. I caught the coverage when she appeared stony-eyed at an early morning news conference and announced that her kids had sacrificed enough for her military career.
“I’m requesting a humanitarian discharge,” she told the reporters thrusting mikes in her face. “I can’t put my children through another traumatic separation.”
As I crunched down on my usual breakfast bagel, I felt a tug of genuine sympathy for the woman. She’d ma
de the right decision. No question about that. Trish and Joey had endured more than any kids should have to. Yet I couldn’t help remembering Diane’s emphatic assertion that she was damned good at her job.
I suspected she would be toting a gun again soon, this time as a civilian cop. A suspicion Mark Ruiz confirmed when he contacted me at work early Monday morning to tell me I wouldn’t need to drive up to the regional command center. Diane had positively ID’ed Capelli as the man who attacked her at the spa and bragged about killing the Roths.
“She’s one tough cookie,” Ruiz said with a hint of reluctant admiration. “She walked right up to Capelli, looked him square in the eye, and told him he was going down. I was impressed. So was my captain. He told her to come see him once our investigation and the one in Florida are wrapped up.”
I didn’t remind him Special Agent Sinclair also had an ongoing investigation. Whether Diane, Capelli, and LaRosa would play in that one, too, had yet to be determined.
My role, however, was definitely over. A point I stressed to Dr. J when I called him. His bow tie was chartreuse this morning. That odd, yellowish shade my mother calls baby-puke green. Not particularly flattering, especially when topped by a wounded expression that told me I was a tad late getting to him. Again!
“Good morning, Samantha.”
“ ’ Morning, sir. I guess you heard.”
“About your activities last night? Yes, I did. Special Agent Sinclair contacted me. He said you and another member of FST-Three . . .”
He paused for me to fill in the name. I kept silent. If there was any negative fallout from last night I wanted it to fall on me, not Dennis.
“. . . captured a suspected murderer,” the boss finished.
I nodded, waiting for the NLOS ax to fall. It wasn’t long in coming.
“I also understand you deployed the system we discussed when you were here at headquarters.”
“Yes, sir.”
Now You See Her Page 16