Shadows of Deceit (A Series of Shadows) (2 page)

The McAllister compound was a home that Lou’s step-father, Joe, had built for her mother for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary as a surprise. The twelve-thousand square foot Tuscan Mediterranean home was carefully planned and crafted on it’s majestic ten acres to Joe’s exact specifications and with the express request that Lou live there with them. Family, after all, was the most important thing.

Lou was born in Los Angeles but when she was five, and after a year of Joe’s begging, her mother finally accepted his proposal and moved them to Galveston to live with him. Lou’s father had been killed in the line of duty when she was only two. If truth be told she barely remembered him. Joe had long since become Lou’s dad in every way that mattered to her. Even still, the memories Lou did have of her father were kept strong and vibrant through the stories her mother and uncle would tell her over the years. They made her proud and inspired her to follow in his and her uncle’s footsteps. Lou moved back to L.A. after highschool to attend college and applied to the Sheriff’s Department just before graduation. Once accepted, she never looked back. Even though she was only five-feet, four-inches, she earned her reputation as a tough-as-nails cop with a bull-dog investigative style. No one, but no one, other than her mother and uncle called her Tallulah unless they wanted their ass handed to them in a paper bag. Lou’s soft side was reserved solely for animals. As she watched the last baby raccoon waddle behind a huge oak and vanish into the landscape, Lou happily admitted she was a sucker for animals. It was people that she often had issues with. That was true now more than ever since no one was who they appeared to be.

Lou drank the last of her coffee and set the empty mug on the table beside her. The security light below finally shut off and the dark blue aura of morning wrapped all around her. She tucked her hands into the pockets of her robe and snuggled deeper into the chair, closing her eyes and allowing the peace and quiet of the morning to lull her to sleep for a little while longer.

Veteran Homicide Detective,
Vincenzo DeLuca, pulled his standard department issue sedan up to the crime scene perimeter, shut off the engine and sat quietly for a moment. He looked out the windshield and took in the scene with the multitude of deputies guarding the perimeter and the forensics people ducking back and fourth under the tape. He missed his partner. It had been over a month since Lou had been injured and sidelined. It hit him hard. Life was throwing too many curve balls at him lately. In a little more then seven months he was going to be a father and that scared the crap out of him. As a result of a serious reality check, Vinny concluded that he needed to be around more for his family so he did the responsible thing and had taken and passed the lieutenant’s exam. He knew it was the right thing to do but the thought of not being out in the field was really not settling well with him. He loved being a homicide detective and he loved working with his partner. Lou was his best friend and former partner’s niece. She was his family too. With her recovering, homicide was down a man and with his making lieutenant, things were getting shuffled around more than he would like. Vinny was looking for his successor and it wasn’t going well at all. Lou was tricky to partner with. She had a hard time snapping to in the morning so Vinny usually picked her up for work. She was stubborn as hell and often rubbed people the wrong way if left unchecked. Vinny had to find the right fit before he was even going to think of taking a seat behind a desk and leaving her with a stranger. Lou being out on medical leave had actually provided him the golden opportunity to properly vet the candidates without her considerable two-cents. He hadn’t been the least bit happy with the first seven applicants, none of which even lasted a full day before he sent them packing. Vinny couldn’t give up hope though. He knew it would probably take a dozen tries before he would find someone he felt could truly have Lou’s back and do the job right. He would meet contestant number eight in an hour or so. In the meantime, they had a whopper of a case on their hands and he really wished Lou was with him.

With a heavy sigh, Vinny got out of the car and headed into the trenches. It was a magnificent house even with the onslaught of deputies, investigators and coroner personnel trampling all over the yard. As he approached the front doors he got nods and acknowledgments from the masses. Vinny liked being liked. It was going to come in handy with his transition to management. When he finally reached the front doorway he grabbed a pair of blue paper booties from a box on the ground and pulled them over his loafers then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of thick latex gloves. With a crisp snap of the latex, he was sufficiently prepared to proceed. Upon entering the home he immediately saw the forensic team at work in the foyer. The cavernous formal entry was brightly lit with both portable lights and the sparkly glow of the giant crystal chandelier hanging directly over the scene. At the center of the room was a large pool of congealed blood that spread out thickly over the highly polished marble floor. There in the middle lay three bodies, snugly placed side by side like sardines in a can. Vinny could only see the lower half of the victims because deputy medical examiner Caroline Devereux was sprawled out on tip toes, hovering, obscuring his view of the upper torsos of the bodies. Even though they were clearly past the two day dead mark, the deceased appeared to be men. High priced suits and even higher priced shoes sagged in the middle of the bloody puddle. When Caroline stood up and twirled around in a move he thought only a ballerina could make, Vinny got the first sight of the fact that the victims had been decapitated.

“Riddle me this one Bratman.” Caroline grinned at him. “You happen to see these guys’ heads on your way in?” The cheery southern belle stretched out one leg carefully then tiptoed out of the blood pool towards him and removed her gloves.

“There’s something ya don’t see every day. Mornin’ Doc.” Vinny smiled at Caroline then looked back at the conundrum.

“Morning Vinny. No crash-test dummy today?” Caroline had taken to calling Vinny’s prospective replacements the colorful but ironically accurate term. She snickered as she took a paper cup handed to her by one of the techs and happily sipped.

“Not yet. Got another contestant coming in though. I sent word for them to meet me here. Baptism by fire so to speak.” Vinny smirked.

“Good idea! I’ll slow down so I can get a shot at him. It a him or a her?” Caroline popped the plastic lid off the paper mug so she could gulp the caffeine.

Vinny looked at her sideways. “You think I would put Lou with a girl? She barely likes you.” He turned his attention back to the matter at hand. “So what have we got here Doc? This looks a little hinky.”

“A little?” Caroline snorted, careful not to choke on her coffee. “We got three males. From left to right we have a Latino, a Caucasian and another Latino. No I.D. on any of them or from the thumb scan but I uploaded the prints to the lab for a full search so I’ll let you know as soon as we get anything.”

Vinny nodded and wished he had his own coffee. “OK, what else?”

“Preliminary time of death is about twenty-four to thirty hours ago. Sometime between late Friday night and early Saturday morning.” Caroline stepped away from the scene and carefully removed her blue booties then stuffed them in a bio-hazard bag that was set up next to the front door. “I will be able to narrow that down a bit better once I get them back to the shop and the bugs are processed.”

“So no heads on site huh? Seriously?” He looked at the scene carefully. It took a bit of work to accomplish this.

“Seriously. Your guys are going over the place with a fine tooth comb but from what I have seen so far, there is not one drop of blood outside this circle here. No tissue, no spatter, nothing.”

Vinny had noticed the lack of blood spatter right off. The chandelier was spotless and gleaming, the walls could have passed for freshly painted and the floor outside of the pool itself were polished to a mirror finish. Given the volume of blood that was present, it appeared to Vinny that this was their primary crime scene, where the bodies bled out, but decapitation was a messy business. Whether the heads were chopped off, sawed off or whatever, there would be some sort of spatter, spray or cast-off as a result. Despite appearances, the forensics team was swabbing everything and scanning every inch with their magic flashlights. If something was there, they would find it.

Caroline looked past Vinny and saw the detectives assigned to the case heading their way.

“Here comes Cagney and Lacy. I’m sure they will fill you in.” She finished her sentence with an eye-roll, clearly expressing her dislike for the detectives.

“Ah crap. I forgot they were on call.” Vinny turned around to meet the detectives and took an authoritative stance that made Caroline grin.

Two female detectives walked up the path, both flipping through their notepads and scowling like they were looking for a fight. The pair did in fact resemble the characters from the television series that ran for the better part of the nineteen-eighties. Detective Sara Rochelle had cropped jet black hair and an extremely thick Brooklyn accent. She had joined the Sheriff’s department after working vice on the East Coast for seven years and despite having glowing recommendations on paper, it was well known that she left Brooklyn to avoid being caught up in a serious internal affairs fiasco. Off the record, Vinny’s captain had warned him that Rochelle had a reputation back East for pushing the envelope with suspects, just dancing on the edge of police brutality. Nothing could ever be proven and no one ever filed a formal complaint against her but Vinny didn’t trust her all the same.

Detective Lydia Barnes was the taller of the two and had impossibly short bleach-blond, spiky hair. As usual, she looked like she spent all her spare time working out at Muscle Beach down in Venice. She was extremely tan and had a very masculine physique. Vinny was certain she could crush his head like a walnut simply by clapping her hands. He was really glad the captain had told him in confidence that she was gunning for a transfer to the Special Enforcement Bureau. Neither detective liked Vinny or Lou and they made no secret of it. He was sure it fried both of their asses that he had made lieutenant and was now their superior. A fact that was clearly confirmed as Rochelle completely ignored him and directed her attentions to Caroline.

“What have you got for me Devereux?” Rochelle’s thick accent only accentuated her annoyance.

Caroline cocked her head and looked at the woman with disbelief. Not acknowledging Vinny as an individual was one thing, but snubbing her lieutenant was wholly unprofessional and insubordinate. Rochelle simply stared at Caroline waiting, totally oblivious to how her behavior was inappropriate.

Caroline finally rolled her eyes at the stubby woman which made Vinny think she must have had a headache from all her eye-rolling. “I already relayed my findings thus far to your lieutenant. I’ll forward my report when it’s done.” Caroline turned her back on Rochelle, grabbed a set of fresh booties and pulled them over her shoes. “Nice to see you again Lieutenant DeLuca.” She winked at him before she moved back into the house to continue her work.

“Morning Lieutenant.” Barnes stepped up and addressed Vinny directly, clearly trying to make up for her partner’s major faux pas. “So far we have deputies responding to a silent alarm that was triggered at approximately 5:21 a.m. The security company informed dispatch that the residence was equipped with full surveillance for the entire property. The live feed streams directly to their facilities and is supposed to be monitored twenty-four-seven. However, the feed was blacked out or otherwise disabled at around 1:07 a.m. Unfortunately, no one at the monitoring facility noticed it until the silent alarm was triggered.” Barnes flipped through the pages of her notebook before she continued. “They are cooperating and sending us all of the footage they have for the past several days and we are meeting with the chief security manager once we are done here.”

“The source of the alarm?” Vinny ignored Rochelle completely and directed his questions to Barnes.

“Well that’s a mystery in itself.” Barnes ruffled the top of her spiky head. “When Lopez and Gearhard entered the premises the alarm system was not only disengaged but completely dead. No power to any of the control panels or the cameras, which explains the black out. Our techs are looking at it right now but no wires were cut and the back-up battery is in-tact. There is a lot here that isn’t making any sense right off the bat.”

“Like what?” Vinny really wanted a cup of coffee right about now.

“The house is totally clean. No furniture, bare floors vacuumed clean, not a piece of lint or dust anywhere. The kicker is that security for the community had no clue the resident moved out. They have the current resident listed as Casius Arcano, with a regular in and out pattern morning and evening. Other than a large cocktail party at the residence last Saturday, there have been no visitors or deliveries to this address since then. Nothing has deviated out of the norm and they say he is very friendly with the guards. Last entry for him was coming in Friday evening at 6:32 p.m. like usual. There have been no movers in or out of the entire community for any resident in over a week. No trucks other than UPS and FedEx that could possibly have cleaned this place out. The watch commander for the community is all over this.”

Vinny considered the implications of what Barnes was telling him. “Those two gates the only way in or out of here?”

“Yes sir. Well, I guess you could do a hike up the canyon but no way in hell could you move furniture out that way or bring in a crew and all the equipment needed to get this place so spotless. Forensics is coming up with nothing anywhere in the house so far. Not one single fingerprint, not on a knob or even the faucets. This place was scrubbed clean and recently.”

Vinny nodded in understanding despite really not understanding how all this was possible. “Devereux is putting time of death between late Friday night and early Saturday morning so clean up had to take place after that. Cutting those heads off made a royal mess, no two ways about it, but someone wanted things neat and tidy for us.” Vinny looked back at the bodies and tried working it out in his head.