Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) (26 page)

“One that ended badly for Mr. Salazar,” Gus added.

“True. Here’s to scumbags getting their proper comeuppance,” Dwayne said, raising his water glass in a toast.

“Yeah. But how many times have you seen coincidences that end up being nothing more than a distraction?” I asked.

He nodded. “Plenty,” he admitted. “What’s your thinking? You got a new plan yet?”

“I’ve been working on it this morning,” I said. “We assume she doesn’t come back in on her own. We start back at the beginning with our ABCs, looking for tracks, cell phone records, bank accounts, credit cards—standard stuff.”

“Her cell phone was in her condo,” Gus said. “It won’t help you.”

“I know. If she left and is hiding, it’s a little hard to imagine that she wouldn’t contact anybody that she knows. We’re going to look at the incoming side. We’re going to examine the phone records of some people close to her and see if any calls started coming in, starting last Friday or so, that look out of the ordinary. If she’s making calls to them, then we’ll see a pattern, even though we might not be able to ID the phone number.”

Dwayne had been raising another piece of that octopus-looking crap to his mouth. He froze halfway. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “How the hell you going to do that? How are you getting into people’s phone records?” he asked.

“Better you don’t know,” I said. “Suffice it to say that we won’t be using the information we gather as courtroom evidence. We’re just looking for tracks.”

“That’s a long shot,” he said. “That would mean someone’s not being truthful with us.”

“That’s right,” I said. “But it will also eliminate people from suspicion as well.”

Dwayne thought for a second, then said, “Well, let’s hope she comes home of her own accord.” He returned to his lunch.

“Agreed.”

After we finished lunch, Dwayne said, “Call us, and let me know what’s going on. We’re relying on you for the lead.”

“Will do,” I said.

“Oh,” he said suddenly, “I just thought of something else. You may as well call Kara Giordano and tell her she can come home.”

“We did that this morning,” I said. “She was relieved.”

“I’ll bet.”

~~~~

After the meeting, I went back to the office and apologized to the troops for flaking out the previous afternoon. Toni was right, team leader was one of my job responsibilities and though I didn’t realize it at the time, I’d dropped the ball yesterday. I’d been deeply disappointed over the unexpected demise of Eddie Salazar, but that was no excuse. Everyone was disappointed. I screwed up.

But not today. I located Kenny and Doc and made amends.

“No problem, boss,” Kenny said. “It was a big disappointment—Eddie Salazar turning up dead. We understand you’d need some alone time. Besides, you work your ass off seven days a week. You’re entitled to a little down time every now and again.”

“Thanks for that,” I said. “Still, I appreciate what you guys do, and I don’t want to take advantage of your good nature.”

They both seemed to appreciate my mea culpa, which is good because I damn sure appreciate the work they do. I wouldn’t want to have to try to replace either of them, especially because of a bone-headed screwup on my part.

I had Kenny start checking phone records of Gina’s parents, of Robbie Fiore, of Reggie Campbell, and of Kara Giordano. I wanted him to look for any numbers that started popping up after last Friday that didn’t show up before. If the numbers belonged to a prepaid cell phone, we wouldn’t be able to track it. But at least we’d know something was up.

I checked with Doc to find out how he was coming with his registered sex offenders.

“If I had a damn army of investigators, I could have checked out each of these sleazeballs in a couple of days. As it is, even if our whole team jumped on it, it would take a couple of months. I’m starting to think we should drop this, boss, and focus on areas where we’re more likely to find her alive.”

“I agree. I finally figured out the same thing this morning. Hope you’re not pissed at me for having you spin your wheels on it,” I said.

“No, hell no,” he said. “We break out with all guns blazing. Later on, we dial it in and close the deal. That’s where we are now. I’m cool.”

“Good. I appreciate it.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon going through notes, reviewing reports, looking for clues. Before I went home, I found Toni in her office.

“I want to thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“Thanks for kicking my butt last night and reminding me of my role. I shouldn’t have needed that, but obviously I did. You were right.”

“What are friends for?” she asked, smiling.

“I appreciate it. I needed it.”

I looked at her and smiled. I turned to leave, but suddenly I remembered something. I looked back at her and said, “Oh, thanks for something else, too,” I said.

“What?”

“Thanks for wearing that black leather outfit. It fuckin’ rocks. Gus almost had a heart attack when he saw you, right there in the middle of the restaurant.”

“You’re welcome.” She smiled slowly, then caught herself. “But you can’t say that.”

I was puzzled. “Why not?”

She stood up and walked around her desk toward me. “Geez,” she said, “do I have to teach you everything about being a boss?” She stood in front of me and smiled. “You can’t say that, you dope,” she paused and poked me in the chest, “because I, as a humble employee, might be inclined to think that your comments were a form of sexual harassment. Then I’d have to sue.” She winked at me and said, “You’d better get out of here before I file a complaint.”

~~~~

That night I went to bed early. Despite our setback, I felt good, somewhat rejuvenated. I was ready to reengage. If Gina didn’t come home on her own, I was ready to get down to some real detective work and find her.

I fell asleep easily, but then I started tossing and turning. I dreamed again. In my dream there were angels—dancing angels.

Chapter 16

MY APARTMENT DOESN’T
have air conditioning. Usually, that’s alright, because most years, there are only a few days when you actually might need it. Unfortunately, yesterday was one of them, and last night I paid the price. I sweated, tossed and turned, and dreamed about everything—including Gina—all night long until, fed up with it, I finally just got up at 0400 and jumped on the Internet. I hadn’t really had a chance to catch up on things for a couple of weeks, and I was eager to see what was happening in the world.

Turns out that missing two weeks of the news cycle doesn’t really seem to matter very much these days. Same issues: economy sucks, home prices are down, foreclosures are up, it’s nobody’s fault, it’s everybody’s fault, Mariner’s are in the cellar. Like the old saying goes: same shit, different day.

I did see one interesting story, though. The Local Section of the
Seattle Times
carried a front-page story of how a prominent suspect in the Gina Fiore disappearance case had been found murdered. They’d managed to sneak in a photographer and grab a photo of two guys from the county coroner’s office wheeling one of the covered-up bodies out the front door of the apartment, complete with yellow crime-scene tape providing a backdrop. If Gina had run off because she was hiding from Eddie Salazar, then she would probably know by now that the coast was clear. She could come home now.

Yet, so far, at 7:00 a.m. on Friday, August 26, she hadn’t.

~~~~

Despite my lack of sleep, I felt pretty good, and I was eager to get to work. I didn’t anticipate seeing anyone official today so, given the weather, I chose my standard summer “casual day” uniform: wrinkled shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and tennis shoes. If I wasn’t working, I’d wear sandals, but you can’t run in the damn things. Even though I didn’t expect to do any running on this particular day, I wore running shoes anytime I was on the job. You never know. It’s the same reason I nearly always carry a gun in my waistband underneath said Hawaiian shirt. It was safely tucked into its Bianchi holster, even though I didn’t anticipate having to shoot anyone today, either.

Thus prepared, I arrived at the office at ten minutes before eight. Richard was back in town, and we had a 9:00 a.m. staff meeting scheduled. I needed to go over my notes and look at the jobs I’d assigned everyone to. Toni arrived five minutes after I did and stuck her head in my office to say good morning. She wore blue jeans and a white sleeveless blouse with a wide collar that nicely showed off her tats. “Morning, boss,” she said, smiling brightly.

“Good morning.”

“Any brilliant ideas come to you last night after you left?”

“Nothing I’d call brilliant,” I said. “We need to huddle up and make sure that we’re all on the same page with regard to transitioning to a single premise—that Gina’s hiding from something or someone we have yet to identify.”

She nodded. “Good,” she said enthusiastically. “Let’s do it. I have some ideas I’ll bring up in the meeting.”

“Good.”

At that moment, my cell phone rang. Caller ID: Dwayne. I held up my hand for her to wait around.

I pressed the button and answered the phone. “Good morning.”

“Good morning to you,” he replied. “Got some new information. Wonder if you and Toni might not mind dropping by.”

“When?”

“Nine o’clock sharp. I’ve got some people coming by to talk to us about some recent developments.”

“Okay.” Damn. Scratch one staff meeting. “Any hints?”

“Can’t,” he said. “Just come on in.”

“Great,” I answered. “We’ll be there.” I hung up.

“We’re going to see Dwayne?” Toni asked.

“Yep,” I answered. “Do me a favor. Tell the other guys and see if we can push our meeting until after lunch.”

~~~~

Forty minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot located beneath the Justice Building, compliments of the pass Gus had given us. We pulled right into an unassigned space next to a row of police cruisers. No hunting for spaces. No driving around.
Sweet
.

We took the elevator to the eighth floor where Dwayne and Gus greeted us in the lobby.

“We’re going back down to six,” Dwayne said. “Homicide.”

This caused my heart to skip a beat, and Dwayne must have seen the sudden look of concern in my eyes.

He laughed and said, “Relax. It’s not Gina. Just a clue. Let’s go.”

On the sixth floor, Detective Ron Bergstrom of the SPD homicide unit met us. He led us back to a conference room and closed the door. Dwayne made the introductions, and we took our seats.

Bergstrom was a stocky guy, probably five feet, ten inches or so, maybe 210 pounds. His hair was brown, going to gray and was clipped in a short, military-style crew cut. He wore a brown suit over a blue dress shirt. He shook my hand with his beefy paw using a grip that could have extracted oil from a hazelnut. I was tempted to check my hand for damage, but I caught myself—it probably would have been poor form.

“Lieutenant Brown’s told me that SPD is working with you guys on the Fiore case,” he said, as he moved to take a seat.

“Correct,” I said.

“Okay then.” He turned to Dwayne. “Dwayne, I assume that means you’re clearing them for sensitive information?”

“Yes,” Dwayne said, “already done. All of the members of Danny’s team are licensed PIs. All of them have signed our confidentiality agreement. These guys are good—they’re helping us a lot.”

“Good,” Bergstrom said. “Last week we provided information to Dwayne about the potential of a serial killer operating in the area. Our cold-case team almost accidentally discovered a pattern in the murders of four young women over the past five years. The most obvious component of the pattern is that each of the four young women had been mutilated in the same fashion: they’d each had a finger clipped off after they were murdered. The killer is apparently collecting them for some sick reason. You’d think that we’d have noticed this as a pattern before now, but we get twenty to thirty new murders per year in addition to the three hundred or so that are in the cold-case files. That, coupled with the apparent fact that this guy only kills one woman per year, makes it pure luck that we noticed the pattern at all. We’ve not released this information to the press because we need to be able to sort the real information from the bogus crap. And we don’t want homicide victims to start popping up all over the city with their fingers cut off. That’s why privacy and confidentially are so important here. Understood?”

Both Toni and I nodded.

“Good,” he continued. “Now, to get down to it, last week I told Lieutenant Brown that there were four victims found in the last five years—one each August except this year.”

He paused and looked at us. “There’s been a change in that information,” he said. “Yesterday morning, a fifth victim was found. The body of a young woman was discovered in a grove of trees just off the 520 across Lake Washington. The woman’s left thumb had been clipped off after she was murdered.” He paused, and then continued, “We were able to positively identify the victim yesterday afternoon. We have not released her name yet, pending notification of next of kin, but I can tell you here with 100 percent certainty that the body is not that of Gina Fiore.”

Although Dwayne had said the victim wasn’t Gina, I still found that I’d been holding my breath for most of that monologue anyway. I slowly released it now.

“Thank you for that information,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear of the death of this woman, but I have to say I’m relieved that it’s not Gina Fiore.”

“That’s understandable,” Bergstrom said.

“Would you think that means we can eliminate this psycho from our list?” Toni asked.

“This is one of the strangest serial killer cases I’ve ever heard of,” Bergstrom said. “Usually when these guys flip out and start murdering people, they seem to have such a lust for it that they can’t stop. Look at Ridgway—he killed something like forty people in two years. Look at that sick bastard Richard Ramírez down in California—he killed twenty-five or so in just three months. He’d kill three or four in the same goddamned day, for Christ’s sake. And then you’ve got our guy who seems satisfied so far to kill just one poor girl a year. Just like clockwork, but, fortunately, just one per year. That sort of control is very unusual for these nut jobs.”