Death Calls

by Caridad Piñeiro

  Chapter 3

  T he alarm beeped furiously. Diana half turned and shut off the noise. She had been awake for some time.

  Was it her imagination or could she still smell him on her pillow?

  It was barely 6:00 a.m., but she tossed aside the covers and rolled out of bed. The barest hint of red in the morning sky promised a clear day ahead. She would have time for a quick run before work.

  Work, where things over the last two weeks had become routine. Normal. As they had been before Ryder.

  A load of cases waited for her to profile. Two others were actively being investigated. Later that day, she had a much-anticipated lunch date with her FBI partner. Afterward, if she didn’t get hung up too late with her active cases, she’d call Sylvia for a girl’s night. It had been too long since they’d had one. Their last lunch together had reminded her just how much she missed seeing her friend.

  Just as having dinner the other night with her brother Sebastian and his wife, Melissa, had demonstrated how removed she had become from her family. For years she and Sebastian had shared an apartment and they had always been close. After the death of their father, grief had united them even more strongly. But Sebastian’s marriage to Melissa had complicated things, Melissa being Ryder’s keeper and all.

  Their recent carefree dinner, however, made it clear that whatever happened between Diana and Ryder would have little impact on her relationship with her brother. She’d had a wonderful time and had even gotten to feel the baby move.

  Now, she shifted her hand downward, laid it over the flat, almost concave plane of her abdomen. Imagined a baby within. Alive. Its tiny heart fluttering beneath the palm of her hand. Growing and being born. Suckling at her breast.

  In her mind’s eye, the baby had Ryder’s dark eyes and hair, but she forced that impossible thought away. Instead she remembered how her little niece or nephew had rolled beneath her palm. Sebastian had smiled at her reaction, looking happier than she had ever seen him.

  Things were working out for him. He was all right.

  Just as she was beginning to believe everything would be all right for her one day. The weeks away from Ryder had been hard, but with each day that passed, with each day of a human routine, she felt her control returning.

  Each day brought more lightness to her spirit, something she hadn’t felt in…forever.

  She could imagine soon being back to a place where her life seemed in order. Where she could enjoy her friends and family. A good place.

  Though more often then she cared to admit, Ryder slipped into her thoughts. Strange as it was, her life with him had in some ways made her believe anything was possible. But the unpredictability had kept her constantly on the edge. An edge that had grown difficult to walk.

  Without him, however, a bit of emptiness existed that none of the routines of her day managed to fill. Routines that had, at one time, sustained her.

  She told herself she just needed to relearn balance, the yin and yang of things. And that couldn’t happen in only a couple of weeks. It would take time. Something Ryder had plenty of, while she…Her time was finite. Unless she gave in to the call of the demon.

  She drove that thought viciously away.

  She knew how hard life was for Ryder and his vampire friends. How they battled to contain the demon’s desire for domination. How they suffered over and over again from the pain of who they had become, of losing those they loved.

  Her father’s death had taught Diana what it was to live with that kind of pain. She couldn’t imagine living with it for eternity. She needed the everyday human world she had been struggling to reenter these past few weeks.

  The cell phone on her nightstand vibrated. As she picked up the phone, the Caller ID indicated it was her friend, N.Y.P.D. Detective Peter Daly.

  Whatever Peter had to say at this early hour couldn’t be good.

  “You’re making a big mistake.”

  The sound of her shoes on the hard tile of the police station hallway echoed as Peter escorted her to the interrogation room.

  “Neighbors reported hearing a shot. Then we got Raul Rodriguez’s 9-1-1 call. When we arrived, he was incoherent. The gun was on the bed where he had supposedly been asleep. And his wife—”

  “Stop.”

  Raul’s wife was Sylvia, who Diana had been thinking about calling only a short time earlier. It was impossible to believe her friend was dead.

  “Diana. I know you’re close to this—”

  “She was one of my best friends. She asked me to be the godmother for their baby. Did you know that? Did you know she was pregnant?”

  Peter had the grace to look chagrined. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? Sorry!” Unable to control herself any longer, she faced the wall and pounded the rough cinder block with her fist.

  Peter pulled her into a tight embrace as if to keep her from hurting herself. “I can’t imagine how tough this is.”

  She held on to him, needing his stability because of all she was tempted to do. Sylvia’s life—her normal, happy, human life—was gone. Destroyed by violence. Violence like that within Diana, so strong she didn’t know if she could hold it back. And if the killer turned out to be Raul…

  Dios. She would give in to the darkness and kill the bastard herself.

  “Di? You need to get a grip if you’re going to talk to him.”

  With a deep shuddering breath, she pulled herself together. Stepping away from Peter, she wiped at her eyes. “Do we have any other leads?”

  Frowning, Peter shook his head. “Everything we have points to the husband. Maybe he found out the baby wasn’t—”

  Diana silenced him with a pointed slash of her hand. “Don’t go there. Sylvia didn’t mess around,” she said, then stalked down the hall to the interrogation room, Peter trailing behind her.

  Raul sat at a Formica-topped table, jailbird-orange clothing hanging loosely on his hunched shoulders. His bloodstained pajamas had been taken as evidence. He was hollow-eyed and obviously still in shock. “Tell me what happened, Raul,” Diana said.

  “No se. We had dinner out. Un poquito de vino, but not much wine since Sylvia…” He stopped as tears spilled down his cheeks. He wiped at them with shaky hands and haltingly continued. “We went home. We were both really sleepy. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.” His hands tumbled in the air. “No se que paso. There was a sound. A loud sound. I started coming to, but everything was fuzzy…” He stopped once more, buried his head in his hands. The tears fell more furiously.

  Diana laid a hand on his shoulder. “I know this is difficult, but you have to try to remember.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” he replied brokenly, and held out his hands as if pleading with her. “De verdad que no se. When I woke up, Sylvia was bleeding. I tried to wake her. When she didn’t respond…I called 9-1-1. I held her. She was so still. Then I saw the gun.”

  “Did you touch the gun, Raul?”

  He shook his head and wiped at his runny nose. “I don’t remember touching it.”

  “Forensics will be able to confirm whether you did or not, Mr. Rodriguez. You may as well tell us now.” Peter moved to the table.

  Raul snarled at the detective, “I did not kill my wife. I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. She was my life. Mi vida.” He jabbed at a spot above his heart to emphasize the point.

  The sincerity in his words con
vinced Diana. She touched Raul’s clenched fist. “I believe you.”

  He slumped into his chair. “Gracias, Diana.”

  She glared at Peter. “I want to see all the reports. Anything you have.”

  “You’re not assigned to this case. If the suspect hadn’t asked for you—”

  “I would have found out and—”

  “You don’t have jurisdiction here.”

  He was right. Taking a deep breath to control her anger and frustration, Diana nodded and followed Peter out of the room. Peter wouldn’t refuse if she asked. So she did. “Ask me to help. I need to know what happened to my friend.”

  Peter gave her a long look. “Unofficially and…whatever I say goes on this one. I’m the lead.”

  “You’re the boss, Detective Daly.”

  Peter let out a soft chuckle. “Right, Reyes. As if that will ever happen with any man in your life.”

  “May I see the evidence, Detective? Pretty please?”

  Peter chuckled again and shook his head. “Cut the shit, Di. You don’t do submissive very well.”

  No, she didn’t, come to think of it. Maybe that was part of the reason her situation with Ryder troubled her so much. What she felt for him made her weak, made her surrender a piece of herself. She wasn’t good about not being in charge.

  “Okay, so I’m asking straight-up. Show me what you’ve got.”

  He motioned down the hallway. “CSU is processing most of it. But we can head to the M.E.’s to see the body—”

  “Don’t call Sylvia that.”

  Peter sighed and dragged a hand through his ragged sun-bleached hair. “I’m sorry. But you need to get perspective.”

  “I will deal with it. But if it were Samantha—”

  “Low blow, Reyes,” he said, his tone filled with anger at the idea of harm coming to his lover—who had sired Ryder more than a century earlier.

  Ryder.

  Like the intertwined strands on a web, everything in her life inevitably led back to him. Could she ever be truly free of him? Or would she be forever ensnared in that web, trapped by what she felt for him?

  Had once felt for him, she reminded herself. As for those emotions and anything connected to them…she had to put them aside and focus on what was most important now—avenging her friend’s death.

  Diana let out an exasperated breath and laid a hand on Peter’s sleeve. “I’m sorry. I will try to handle it better. Let’s go see Sylvia. Por favor.”

  She would do what needed to be done to find Sylvia’s killer. And when she located him…

  Living with vampires for two years had shown her just what she was capable of—fierce, swift action with no hesitation. Justice without the complicated rules of the human world.

  She pitied Sylvia’s killer when he, too, found that out.

  Chapter 4

  J ust a few weeks ago, the swell of Sylvia’s pregnancy had been a sign of hope for good things to come. Today, as Sylvia lay on the shiny metal of the medical examiner’s table, it was a grotesque reminder of promises that would never be fulfilled.

  Diana stood by patiently as the M.E. went over the details of the evidence. Bullet entry and exit wounds. Proximity of the muzzle—a close-contact kill with a large-caliber weapon, straight to the heart. Sylvia could never have survived the trauma. The delay in getting help had sealed the fate of the baby.

  Gunpowder burns and stippling marked Sylvia’s pajamas and skin. The bullet had gone straight through her and into the mattress below. CSU had recovered the bullet, but no casing. Ballistics was already attempting to link the bullet to the gun found and to any other crimes recently committed.

  “Do you know if your friends owned a gun?” Peter asked as he picked up the. 45 caliber revolver in an evidence bag.

  “In law school Sylvia lobbied on behalf of the Assault Gun Ban. What do you think?”

  With a quick nod, he held the bag out for the M.E. “Any prints?”

  “Palm print as well as four fingers. We’re running them now against the suspect.” The M.E. reached into a tray holding more evidence and extracted a bag containing clothing. “Mr. Rodriguez’s pajamas tested positive for blood in various locations, as well as high-velocity blood splatter along the right sleeve.”

  A possible inconsistency suddenly occurred to her. “Palm and fingerprints. Right or left hand?”

  The M.E. flipped the bag containing the gun back and forth and examined the fingerprint powder residue. “Right.”

  “Raul’s a lefty. Sylvia was always getting him those silly gadgets for lefties.”

  “That doesn’t rule out that he used his right hand,” the M.E. said.

  Diana went over the M.E.’s earlier report on the entry and exit wounds. “He was lying on his side, facing her, when he did it.”

  The M.E. bobbed his head up and down. “That would explain the lack of defensive wounds. He could get the weapon in place and fire without her noticing.”

  “Or someone could put the gun in his hand, hold it in place and pull the trigger. Especially if Sylvia and Raul had been drugged. What about gunshot residue?”

  “We haven’t tested him for GSR yet. Before you arrived, he clammed up and asked for a lawyer,” Peter said.

  Years of experience had taught her that the innocent rarely felt the need for a lawyer, but then again, being married to an attorney might make Raul hesitant to provide assistance without legal advice. He had probably heard his share of horror stories from Sylvia about how things got twisted into something other than what they really were.

  “The GSR test would confirm whether or not he was close to the gun when it was fired,” Peter said.

  “But not whether he was the one who actually pulled the trigger,” Diana reminded him. “The blood splatter pattern, however, might tell us.”

  With an annoyed sigh, likely at the prospect of doing additional work, the M.E. said, “Special Agent Reyes, you can’t actually believe the husband didn’t do it? The case is almost airtight.”

  “Airtight? If someone placed the gun in Raul’s hand and pulled the trigger—”

  “There would be an area on the sleeve that lacked splatter,” Peter finished for her. “Have CSU check the entire right sleeve and make sure those toxicology reports are carefully reviewed for any unusual residues.”

  “Of course, Detective Daly,” the M.E. answered. The glance he shot Diana was anything but friendly. As if to retaliate for the extra assignment the M.E. picked up the scalpel and let it linger above Sylvia’s body. The light caught the sharp edge and a chill transferred itself to Diana’s skin.

  She had seen hundreds of autopsies before, but this one…

  “I need to get back to the office.” She bolted from the room, Peter hot on her heels.

  “You okay?” he asked as she leaned against the wall outside the autopsy room.

  Swallowing to keep down the bile, she could only nod. “Will you call me later? Let me know what’s up and if toxicology finds something?”

  “Will do.”

  As she started to walk away, he said, “Diana?”

  “What?”

  “Will you be all right?”

  With a shake of her head, she said, “I wish I knew.”

  She couldn’t face going home. Couldn’t deal with sitting there alone, thinking about all that had happened. How what had started out as a normal day had spun into…darkness. As black and numb as that which had claimed her nearly a decade
earlier.

  Rushing out of her office, she started walking, headed nowhere in particular. Each step took her farther away from where she began, but no closer to where she needed to be. She wanted to be with other people, somewhere she could let go of the pain that had staked a claim on her this morning.

  She could have gone to her brother, only she didn’t want to drag him down with her misery. As for her partner, David had tried to help her upon her return to the office, but had failed miserably. Her wound had been too fresh for her to accept sympathy.

  Her reaction to today’s events was familiar, she realized. After her father’s death, she had driven away those closest to her. Her mami, her then boyfriend and lover Alejandro, even Sebastian, at first.

  A stitch in her side made her stop. She suddenly realized she had been running, attempting to escape her emotions.

  Only there was no escape.

  As she paused until her breath became regular, hands on her hips, she glanced down the street and realized she was only a block or two from Ryder’s nightclub.

  Had she been running to him or to the darkness she would find there?

  With a deep inhalation, she told herself there was only one way to find out.

  The Lair was the same as always. Charcoal-gray walls, structured to look like rock, absorbed most of the light, leaving the club with the feel of a subterranean chamber. Overhead, by the length of the stainless steel bar, hundreds of fake bats hung from the catwalks and ceiling. The only difference tonight was that the club was less crowded. It was early. So early that not even the band was on stage yet. Instead, music was piped in from a sound system.

  Fine by her. Although she didn’t want to be alone, Diana wasn’t in the mood for masses of people milling around.

  She couldn’t feel Ryder, but then again, she couldn’t feel anything but pain and anger. Loss. And worse than any of them combined, guilt—for not protecting her friend, for being absent from Sylvia’s life so often lately.