Regrets Only (23 page)

“He is,” she replied.

“He sure loves the camera. Best of all is that the price for this picture included six wallet-size photos, too. Something for the in-laws.”

Her own desk opposite Jack’s was empty of any personal effects. She should bring in a picture of her parents, or maybe Cyclops. She’d wait a few more months on Archer, although he’d look the best in a silver-plated frame.

Jack was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. Much to her astonishment she’d witnessed the seasoned detectives napping whenever there was a moment of downtime. Years on the force must bring with it some of form of internal peace, something that certainly eluded her.

“Hi,” she said softly as she approached, not wanting to startle him.

He opened his eyes and rubbed them with his knuckles as he sat forward in his chair.

“How’s Sean?”

“The kid’s tough as nails. He’s already up and about.” Jack smiled. “Thanks for asking.”

“You’d do the same.” Then she added, “Sorry I’m late. Has the warrant application been approved?”

“Santoros is reviewing it now. He paged me a few minutes ago and said we had to include the fact that Roth has no direct link to the gun recovered with the body. He doesn’t want any claim that the application is misleading. But he told us to be on standby. Where’ve you been?” he asked.

“Morgan’s ex-husband—Archer’s dad—wanted to talk to me. I’m not sure it had much to do with the investigation, but one thing unusual came of it. Even though Morgan had nothing to do with her child—from what I understand they may well have been able to walk past each other without a hint of recognition—she had a five-million-dollar life insurance policy for his benefit.”

“Five million?”

Lucy nodded, sharing his astonishment.

He paused, thinking. “Did Archer know?”

“No, and apparently still doesn’t,” she replied quickly. “Fortunately.” She knew what had passed through Jack’s mind and wanted to dispel his suspicions immediately. It was a lot of money, more than most of the world could fathom. A sum that large could easily have a corrupting effect, or at least most homicide detectives would think it could. But ignorance about his windfall wasn’t the only thing protecting Archer; he’d been with her—and his father—at the time of the murder. His alibi was solid.

Jack moved to within a few inches of her and spoke softly. “There’s a reason cops have partners and that has to do first and foremost with officer safety—and also with corroboration. We want to gather evidence in the most defense-proof way. I like you, Lucy, and I respect that you’re tenacious. But let’s not be renegades.” He met her stare. “Okay?”

She felt a pain in her chest as she realized her mistake. Jack wasn’t territorial; he just wanted everything done according to proper procedure. And she should want that, too. Her personal connections to the victim’s family couldn’t get in the way of how she’d been trained to perform an investigation. “I’m sorry,” she said feebly.

“We’ve got a long time together and there will be apologies on both sides. I can assure you of that. But I can’t say I’m not glad the first one came from you.” He smiled.

At that moment, Frank Griffith approached the two detectives. Grabbing an empty chair, he turned it around, swung one leg over, and sat, straddling it backward. His curly blond hair partially covered his eyes, accentuating the disfiguring scar left by the surgical repair of a cleft palate.

“What can you tell us?” Jack asked.

“Not as much as I’m sure you’d like to hear,” the technician responded. “The car was pretty badly damaged. Looks like someone took a baseball bat to it. No doubt the same one that whacked Reese, although we’d need to recover the bat to verify that. We got two good prints—one off the hood of the car and one off the interior armrest. No match came up in our system, but we’ll send it over to the FBI. We also got a bunch of footprints: a woman’s size seven and a half, something with a wedged heel; a man’s ten and a half, probably a golf cleat; and another woman’s size six with a stiletto heel.”

“Wasn’t Morgan wearing high heels?”

“Yeah, but given the imprint in the ground, I’d say it belonged to someone heavier. However, the ground was raked around the area where the body was discovered so none of these footprints were in the immediate vicinity. The killer obviously wanted to cover his—or her—tracks. Used a garden rake, nothing unusual, probably a metal one since we recovered no broken prongs.”

“Anything else?” Lucy asked.

“Ballistics confirmed that the recovered bullet came from Ellery’s gun. We’ve got a blood sample on the inside of the driver’s-side door that doesn’t match the victim. She was an AB. The sample’s type A. The leather interior and steering wheel had been wiped clean with some kind of alcohol that the lab hasn’t yet been able to identify. Stan’s still working on it,” he said, referring to Stanley Edmond, the chief chemist in the forensics laboratory. “Toxicology came back with trace amounts of Klonopin consistent with a prescribing dosage, nothing more, and a fairly low dose at that. But alcohol content was high. The gas chromatography-mass spectrometry test was positive for a blood alcohol level of point oh-seven. She was pretty pickled.”

“Did you get anything from the fibers Ladd scraped from under her fingernails?”

“Only that they were navy blue cashmere. We don’t have enough to try to identify a dye lot or a brand.”

“What about the hair?”

“We did confirm that the recovered hair was not human. There were some food crumbs and a wrapper from one of those low- carbohydrate bars so it’s possible an animal came to forage—a squirrel maybe, although the hair was pretty long—maybe a raccoon.”

“Is that possible? A raccoon wouldn’t crawl inside a car while people were still around, would it? Food or no food, it seems unlikely to me. And we responded right after Barbadash heard the gunshot.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Just thinking aloud. I’m no veterinary specialist, but in my experience raccoons crawl around in the trash in a garage when everyone’s asleep in the house. They’re nocturnal and skittish. We had Morgan battling someone with a baseball bat, not the kind of quiet that promotes raccoon activity.” She paused, thinking. “Is there any difference between a strand of fur from a coat and one from a live animal?”

“You think the driver wore a raccoon coat?”

“I’d speculate on animal behavior before I’d hypothesize about fashion, but it was just a thought.”

Just then Jack’s pager went off. He glanced down at the small BlackBerry to read the text message. “Time to head on out. We’ve got our approval. A magistrate’s signature and good old Calvin Roth won’t know what hit him.”

18

3:45 p.m
.

A
darkened sky hovered over the small A-frame house. Set back from the street, it was surrounded by mesh and barbed-wire fence, a makeshift barricade. Sheets were drawn across each of the windows, blocking any view inside. Two flowerpots from which protruded an array of dead stalks, a pile of broken bricks, and an overturned wheelbarrow formed a heap to the left of the front door. To the right was what appeared to be an empty chicken coop. A lone bantam pecked at bits of dirt as it paraded back and forth, clucking quietly.

“Don’t you need some sort of agricultural permit to keep those in the city?” Lucy whispered as she tightened the straps of her bullet-proof vest around her waist and zippered her Gore-Tex Windbreaker over it.

“Why don’t we let animal control tackle that problem? Just focus on the guns, O’Malley,” Jack said.

She could see the tension in his face as he ran through his mental checklist. Executing a warrant could be hazardous duty, but it was especially dangerous when the property owner was a psychiatric patient with an arsenal of weapons.

They’d parked a block away and walked to the house with a back-up team. The strategy was clear: Get as close to the front door as possible without detection, announce their arrival, and, if necessary, break their way in. But it didn’t take long to realize that a clandestine approach was going to be difficult in this location. Shadows from an adjacent apartment building would provide some cover, and a row of thorny bushes along one side of the lot might help, too. But getting through the padlocked front gate was certain to blow their cover, unless Calvin was asleep or under the influence of some antipsychotic drug.

“Ready?” Jack asked.

Lucy gripped the handle of her Glock 9 mm. She could feel her heart beating in her chest. She had seventeen shots—sixteen in the mug and one in the chamber. She’d never before discharged an entire round, but today she had a nagging feeling of doubt mixed with a more than healthy dose of terror.
I am in fear for my life
, Morgan had attested. And look where she’d ended up. She adjusted her fingers ever so slightly, settling them in perfect alignment against the cold metal.

“You bet,” she said, wanting to sound convincing. Ben DeForest and Elliott Langley, the back-up team, nodded to indicate their readiness.

“Be careful everyone.” Jack crouched down, leading the way. He stayed in shadow along the perimeter until he was parallel to the padlocked gate. The three of them scurried behind him. He paused, glanced back in their direction, replaced his gun in its holster, and removed a pair of metal cutters. “Cover me,” he directed Lucy.

As he crept toward the gate, Lucy scanned the windows of the house, searching for the slightest movement inside, the flutter of a sheet against a window. All was quiet. Was Roth there? If so, what was he doing? Although she could hear the sound of the lock being cut open, and the squeaking of the rusted gate as Jack made room for the detectives to pass, she stayed focused, refusing to be distracted even for a split second. She’d made one mistake in this investigation. She wasn’t about to do it again. One glimpse, one turn of the head, was all it took to fail in the primary task of protecting her partner.

Before she knew it, Jack had returned to the protection of the shadows, tucked the cutters away in a bag that would be temporarily left behind, and pulled his weapon. He checked the chamber as if in his absence something might have changed. Then with a wave of his arm, he led them closer. They hurried through the open gate. While Ben and Elliott split left and right to surround the house, he and Lucy sprinted to the front.

Jack banged on the door. “Police! Open the door! We’ve got a search warrant!” he yelled, following perfect knock-and-announce procedure. He waited a second, then repeated his command. “Police! Open up!”

Lucy stood beside him with her eyes fixed on the doorknob. She knew it was a matter of seconds, but time seemed to have stopped. There was an eerie quiet, a silence that was palpable. Even the scratching of the chicken had stopped.
Come on, Calvin. Open the door.
This search had been her idea in the first place. Although Lieutenant Sage had agreed that it made sense, she knew she’d feel responsible if anything happened, especially if it happened to Jack. He was taking the lead because he was the senior detective. The man who was a beloved husband and the father of two put himself in harm’s way before her. For a fleeting moment, she wondered whether she would ever have his courage or decency. He had qualities that even a lifetime on the force couldn’t teach.

Give it up, Calvin.
She wanted to beg. Even as she waited, hoping, she wondered how much time Jack was willing to give him to comply voluntarily before he broke down the door. That issue hadn’t been discussed in advance. But knowing Jack, Calvin didn’t have long.

A flicker caught her by surprise. Was the knob turning? Had the sunlight somehow caught the movement? Could the sun even reflect off tarnished brass? Just then she heard an explosion from within. Glass shattered. Instinctively she and Jack both ducked, and pressed themselves against the side of the house.

After a second, the quiet engulfed them once again.
Man down.
Every muscle in her body was tense as she waited for those fateful words through the walkie-talkie, but they didn’t come. She squeezed the trigger on her Glock, but didn’t pull. No trained police officer was about to shoot aimlessly into a building, and there was no target in sight.

She turned to Jack. His eyes remained fixed on the door, and he seemed to ignore her. Instead he stood and repeated his command for what she knew was the final time. “Police! Open up! We have you surrounded!”

Then he kicked the door, heel leading, a singular thrust using all the power in his leg. The wood splintered. He kicked again and the door fell forward off its hinges.

“Go! Go! Go!” she muttered to herself through a clenched jaw. No matter how many times she’d stormed a home, it was never simple. Fear mingled with an acute sense of mortality. She was trained. She knew what she was doing, but it never got routine. She stepped inside, moving past Jack into the darkened entrance.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the sudden lack of light. The foyer was nearly empty but for an overturned bentwood rocker in one corner. Moving forward, spinning ever so slightly on the axis of her body with arms outstretched and gun raised, she made her way down a narrow corridor. She sensed Jack’s presence behind her, but neither said a word. As they progressed she was acutely aware of a pungent odor, a stench that grew steadily stronger as she approached a doorway. The door was ajar and she hesitated for a moment, her instincts warning her against glancing inside. A ray of sunlight through the tiny window, the glass of which had been shot away, illuminated the overflowed toilet. Pieces of glass lay in a brown fluid that covered the floor. Blood stained the small pedestal sink, and a toothbrush floated in the clogged drain. What appeared to be human feces were smeared over a good portion of the walls, making a collage of brown and crimson on the peeling paisley wall-paper.

She gagged and coughed once to clear her throat.

Jack grimaced, then nodded, indicating that he would continue forward away from the stench and she should follow. Since someone—probably Calvin—had fired on a police officer from this bathroom, they could leave it to the Crime Scene team. Let them identify the bodily fluids and figure out what in hell’s name had happened in a space no bigger than a closet.