06 Fatal Mistake

by Marie Force

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Sam said.

  “But that’s why! They killed him because he missed that ball! How do I tell my boys that their papa died because he didn’t catch a ball?”

  Sam didn’t want to think about her own son finding out about the ballplayer’s senseless death, let alone Willie’s sons. She sat next to Carmen and took her hand. “I’ve been doing this a long time, long enough that I’ve seen the worst of humankind—and the best. The one thing I’ve never understood is how anyone can take a life. I hope I never reach the point in my career where that makes sense to me. I’ve also learned that the most obvious motive often has nothing to do with what really happened. There’s a good chance this will never make sense to you. If we do our jobs, you’ll know how it happened, but you may never know exactly why.”

  “What am I supposed to do now? He was my whole world. Willie and our boys. They’re my world.” When she sagged, Sam put an arm around her, something she rarely did with strangers.

  “I need to know if Willie had a cell phone.”

  “Yes, he had it with him all the time in case I needed to reach him.”

  “It wasn’t on him when we found him, so I’ll need the number.” Sam dropped her arm from around Carmen’s shoulders to write down the number as Carmen recited it for her.

  “Could we call your family or his?” Freddie asked. “You’ll want them to know what’s happened before his death is reported on the news.”

  “I’ll call my brother,” she said, defeated as acceptance began to settle in. “He’ll take care of telling Willie’s family, and he’ll come here to be with me.”

  “Where is he?” Freddie asked.

  “In the D.R.”

  “If you’d like me to wait here with you until he arrives, I’d be happy to do that,” Freddie offered, glancing at Sam.

  After the night without sleep, they were running on fumes and would have to quit soon anyway. She gave a short nod to grant her approval.

  “Do you want me to call your brother for you?” Freddie asked.

  “Yes, please. I don’t think I could say the words.”

  “I’ll say them for you,” he said.

  Before she left, she took Freddie aside. “You came here hungry. Want me to have something sent over for you?”

  He shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ve lost my appetite.”

  She could understand why. “When the brother gets here, go home. Meet me at HQ at zero seven hundred. You did good with her, Detective.”

  “Glad you thought so. I was dying inside.”

  “Me too.”

  He handed over her keys. “Where’re you going from here?”

  “The ballpark.”

  * * *

  On the way to the Federals’ stadium, which was named after a credit card company Sam had never heard of and could never remember the name of, she called dispatch.

  “This is Lieutenant Holland. I need to speak to the officer in charge of patrol at the moment.”

  “Just a moment please, Lieutenant.”

  She waited on hold for a long time, listening to weird instrumental music that made her long for her earbuds. Finally, the call went through.

  “Stahl.”

  If she hadn’t been driving, she would’ve rolled her eyes to high heaven. “I asked for patrol, not the rat squad.”

  “What do you want, Holland?”

  “I want to speak to the officer in charge of patrol.”

  “You got him.”

  “What’re you doing there?”

  “Covering for the lieutenant who worked all night on crowd control, not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Oh that’s right, you Internal Affairs types don’t get the recall messages that the rest of us get. I hope you had a good night’s sleep while our city was being torn apart.”

  “Is there a purpose for this call? If not, I’ve got better—”

  “Be quiet and listen to me.” Was it possible to hear a person’s face turn purple? Sam smiled at the images that danced through her mind. “I need a thorough sweep of the entire Southwestern quadrant of the city, from Potomac Avenue to Independence. We’re looking for a large quantity of blood. It would be hard to miss.”

  “And you expect me to devote our currently limited resources to a witch hunt for you?”

  “We’re looking for a murder scene, you stupid ass. Get patrol on it, or I’ll get Farnsworth on you.”

  “That’s right, all you have to do is snap your fingers, and he jumps. Are you sleeping with him, Holland? Because that would explain a lot—”

  Before he could say anything else that would make her understand how someone could commit murder, Sam ended the call. “Fucking bastard.” For insurance purposes, she placed a call to her superior officer and mentor, Detective Captain Malone.

  “Holland? I heard you caught a homicide.”

  “What in the name of hell is Rat Face Stahl doing in charge of patrol?”

  “Good morning to you too. He’s filling in. We’re extremely short-handed today after everyone worked all night.”

  “Why can’t they work all day too? We are.”

  “Not everyone has your squad’s dedication to duty, Lieutenant.”

  “Are you patronizing me, Captain?”

  “Would I be foolish enough to patronize you? What can I do for you?”

  She told him what she knew so far about the Vasquez murder, which wasn’t much, and what she needed from patrol officers.

  “I’ll see to it. We’re going to need to put our heads together about how to go public with this.”

  “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. My next stop was going to be the ballpark, but if I go there we’ll tip our hand and the team is apt to take control of the story. I’d really like to see their reactions when they hear the news. So I was thinking, I’ll go over there and break the news to the team, while you all handle the media at the same time. And P.S., I’m going to take Agent Hill with me. He knows the owner, Jestings, and can smooth the way a bit.”

  “I like the plan, but I’d like the chief to sign off on it. Stand by, and I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.”

  “Standing by. Can you send me to Archelotta?”

  “Hang on.”

  The lieutenant of the IT division, also the only fellow officer Sam had dallied with romantically, picked up on the third ring. “Archelotta.”

  “Hey, it’s Holland.”

  “How’s it going? Heard you caught a homicide.”

  “Yeah, Willie Vasquez.”

  “No way. No fucking way.”

  “Can you see if you can get a signal from his phone? It wasn’t on him when we found him.”

  “Sure. Whatever I can do.”

  Sam gave him the number.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I have anything. Might take a while though. I heard cell service has been interrupted in some sectors because of the riots.”

  “We’ll take whatever we can get.”

  “Gotcha. I’ll be in touch.”

  As long as she had some time, she stopped for a sandwich and treated herself to a rare diet cola. If there’d ever been a time for a caffeine boost, this was it. Thirty hours without sleep was beginning to make her muzzy around the edges. While she ate in the car, she placed a call to her dad’s house.

  “We were wondering when we’d hear from you, Sam,” her stepmother, Celia, said. “Long night?”

  “Very long and not over yet. We’re still at it.”

  “Lord. What an awful thing and all over a ball game.”

  Wait until Celia heard the rest of what’d happened because of a ball game. “My thoughts exactly. Is my dad handy?”

  “Hang on just a minute, honey.”

  Sam smiled at the endearment. She enjoyed being mothered by the sweet nurse who’d married her paralyzed father on Valentine’s Day. She thought about her own mother, who’d recently reappeared in her life. Her mother was looking to heal the rift that had
festered between them since the day after Sam graduated from high school and her mom left her dad for another man. Some rifts could never be healed, or so she liked to think. As long as she went with that line of reasoning, she wouldn’t have to deal with her mother’s desire to spend some time together.

  “Lieutenant,” Skip said when he came on the line. “How goes it?”

  “It’s been better. After the city was torn apart last night, we found Willie Vasquez dead in a Dumpster behind Air and Space.”

  “Come on...”

  “Sad but true. Stabbed through the heart.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Just had to tell his wife. Totally sucked.”

  “Always does, baby girl. I don’t envy you that.”

  “First time I’ve ever caught a murder when the entire city had motive.”

  “That’s a tough one, but I have faith in you. You’ll get to the bottom of it. Poor Scotty. He’ll be crushed.”

  “I know. Nick is getting him from school and taking him to the office for the afternoon.”

  “It’ll help him to be with his dad.”

  “It’s helping me to be with mine, even for a couple of minutes.”

  “Aww, kid, you sure know how to pull your old man’s heartstrings.”

  Sam smiled at the gruffly spoken words, fortified by the sound of his voice and his reassurances. “I’ll come by in the morning.”

  “I’ll be here. Tell your boy to come see me when he gets home.”

  “I will.”

  “Let me know how I can help with this one.”

  “I’ll do that too. Talk at ya later.”

  Malone called back ten minutes later than planned. By then Sam was on her way to dozing off in the car. “I talked to the chief,” he said. “He gave the plan a green light. Hit me with a text when you’re in with the team, and we’ll call the press conference. We’re deploying people all over the city in case there’s more rioting, and we’re sending Crime Scene to the ballpark. The minute you let us know you’re with the team management, they’ll descend on the locker room and anywhere else Willie might’ve been after the game. This way the team won’t have time to prepare for their arrival. If they’ve got anything to hide, our guys will find it. Sound good?”

  What it sounded like was a couple more hours before she could find a horizontal surface. “Yeah. I’m heading for the ballpark right now. I’ve got to wait for Hill, though, so give me half an hour.”

  “You got it.”

  “Also, before you go public, check in with Cruz to make sure Vasquez’s family in the Dominican Republic has been notified.”

  “Will do.”

  Sam ended that call and placed another to Hill, who agreed to meet her at the ballpark’s VIP parking lot. She drove to the ballpark, rehearsing what she would say to the team’s owner and management as she drove. She glanced at the clock. Two-thirty. Nick would be picking Scotty up at school and breaking the unbelievable news about Willie. Sam would give everything she had, including the gold badge she’d worked so hard to earn, to spare the boy she loved from anything that could ever hurt him.

  So this is motherhood. Her heart ached as she imagined how upset he’d be when he heard about Willie. Nick would take care of him this afternoon, and together they’d get Scotty through this.

  Chapter Six

  Nick waited outside the gates to the Eliot-Hine Middle School, watching the flood of kids emerge at dismissal time. When Scotty let them know over the summer that he wished to live with them full-time, they’d had only a couple of weeks to apply for temporary custody from the commonwealth of Virginia’s child welfare authorities and to figure out where to enroll him in school.

  Nick and Sam had gone round and round about the pros and cons of public versus private school. Both of them products of public school, they’d leaned heavily in that direction from the beginning, but worries about security had them visiting a couple of the city’s more prominent private schools.

  After a couple of sleepless nights and many long debates over their first major parenting challenge, they’d decided to let Scotty make the final decision because they felt confident he’d do well at any of the schools they’d visited. He’d declared the private schools too fancy for him and had asked to attend the same school as the other kids in their Capitol Hill neighborhood. Nick had been pleased by the way the boy approached the decision and agreed with his reasoning.

  Nick waited in the spot where Shelby met Scotty every day, where he’d met Scotty himself for the first week of school until he was certain the boy was settled into the new routine. It had taken tremendous schedule juggling to be free at two-thirty every day for a week, but he’d done it happily.

  He’d waited a long time to be a father and to have the family he now cherished. And while he loved the career he’d inherited from his late best friend John O’Connor, his family came first. Always.

  Scotty emerged from the school in a gaggle of boys who were talking and laughing, pushing and shoving, and doing all the things kids did after a long day cooped up in the classroom. Scotty wore a grin that stretched from ear to ear, and Nick smiled as he watched him, thrilled that he’d made new friends so quickly.

  Although he shouldn’t have been surprised. Scotty had a way about him that drew people into his orbit. It was a trait he shared with Nick, who’d always made friends easily, despite the hardscrabble, austere upbringing with his grandmother as reluctant guardian. His friends and their families had saved his sanity, and he still kept in touch with most of the guys he’d grown up with in Lowell, Massachusetts.

  Trailing behind Scotty at a close but respectable distance were the two agents assigned to his detail. They spotted Nick immediately and nodded to him. The area around the school was a madhouse of buses, minivans, crossing guards, pedestrians and bicycles.

  Nick waved to Scotty and delighted in the way the boy’s eyes lit up at the sight of him. Was there anything better than the surprised but thrilled look on his son’s face when he realized Nick was there to get him? Other than Sam, no one had ever loved him as much as Scotty did.

  Scotty said a quick goodbye to his friends and rushed over to hug Nick, who loved that Scotty didn’t care if his friends were watching. Nick supposed that would matter greatly in a year or two, but for now, Nick was a happy recipient of the spontaneous affection.

  “This is a surprise,” Scotty said.

  “I thought you might be up for an afternoon on the Hill.”

  “That’ll be cool.” He’d been to work with Nick before so he could see his office and meet the staff. “What’s the occasion?”

  “We’ll talk about it when we get to the office.” Before Scotty could question what they had to talk about, Nick said, “Did you have a good day?”

  “Boring. As usual.” He said the same thing every day, and by now it had become a joke between them.

  “Come on,” Nick said, giving him a nudge, as he helped Scotty into the back of the SUV. Scotty’s detail would follow behind them in a second SUV. Nick longed for the days of driving himself around the city and hoped the need for protection would end as soon as the election was over. “I’m sure something interesting happened.”

  “I did hear a word I’d never heard before.”

  “In which class?”

  “Lunch,” Scotty said, grinning at him. “Best class of the day.”

  Laughing, Nick followed him into the vehicle. Scotty’s backpack landed with a loud thunk on the floor.

  “So what’s this word you learned?”

  “Blow job. What does that mean?”

  Nick nearly fell out of the car in shock. “Who the heck said that?”

  “This kid Ethan who always acts like he knows everything. He was talking about his football that someone stole, and that if the kid who took it didn’t give it back, he was going to give him a blow job. The other guys were laughing, but I didn’t know what it meant, and I didn’t want them to think I was dumb. So I figured I’d ask y
ou.”

  Christ almighty, Nick thought. What the hell do I do with this one? “Well, um, first of all it has nothing to do with footballs.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  “It’s, ah, sort of a sex thing.”

  Scotty’s entire face folded into a grimace that nearly made Nick laugh. “Eww, gross.”

  “Right, so you might not be ready to hear about it.”

  “I’d still like to know.”

  “Trust me, buddy. I don’t think you want to.”

  “Please? I hate when all the other guys know something I don’t know. It makes me feel stupid.”

  Like he didn’t already have a big enough minefield to walk through with the boy this afternoon? And now this! He yearned for Sam’s common sense approach to things. Where was she when he needed her? He told himself Scotty was twelve, soon to be thirteen, and certainly old enough—or getting there quickly—to know the truth about certain things. Whether or not Nick was old enough at thirty-six to be having this conversation was another story entirely.

  “You’re really going to make me say it, huh?”

  “’Fraid so,” Scotty said with the adorable grin Nick had fallen for the first time he met him.

  “It’s when a girl kisses you, you know... Down there.”

  For the first time since Nick had been forced to accept protection, he was glad he wasn’t allowed to drive so he could have the special joy of watching Scotty’s eyes bug with realization. “Come. On. They don’t really do that!”

  “Yeah, they do. If you’re lucky.”

  “Oh my God, that is the grossest thing I’ve ever heard!”

  Nick suppressed a huge laugh that he knew Scotty wouldn’t appreciate. Someday you won’t think so, he wanted to say, but somehow managed to refrain from sharing the thought.

  “And you actually like that?”

  Nick wanted to die on the spot. Nothing in his life could’ve prepared him for this conversation. “I take the Fifth on that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds that I might die of embarrassment.”

  “That means you do like it. That’s so disgusting. What’s wrong with you?”