Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) (5 page)

Dwayne hadn’t aged at all in the past three years. At five ten, 180 pounds, he’s just a little on the plump side. Short hair. Sharp dresser. He looked like a successful African American businessman. With a badge and a gun.

“Doing really well,” I replied, relieved that he seemed glad to see me. “The agency’s coming along—we’re busy most all the time. How ’bout you—” I noticed the title on his name tag, “—Lieutenant? Moving on up, I see.”

“Yeah, yeah, they bumped me up last year. Put me in charge of the Special Investigations detail.”

“Excellent. Congratulations,” I said.

I nodded toward Toni. “Dwayne, I don’t know if you remember Toni Blair. Toni’s an associate of mine.”

“How could I forget,” he said. “Good to see you again, Toni. You watching this guy here?” he said, laughing, as he slapped me on the shoulder.

“Like a hawk,” Toni said, smiling.

“Good, good,” he said. He turned back to me. “Danny, I know why you’re here. You’re here about Gina Fiore. I figured I’d see you sooner or later about this. Let’s go back to my office and talk.”

That’s an odd thing to say
, I thought, as we followed him back to his office.

Dwayne punched a security code into the keypad next to a door labeled
Authorized Personnel Only
. We followed him through.

“Come on in,” he said, as we entered. “Have a seat over there.” He motioned to a small table in the corner of his office.

“Thanks again for meeting with us,” I said, as we sat down. “I assume you know who Roberto Fiore is.”

Dwayne nodded.

“Yesterday,” I continued, “Robbie came to our office and asked for our help in locating his sister. He told us you were handling the case for SPD. I told him that before we could accept the case on behalf of his family, we needed to clear things with you. My firm has an excellent relationship with SPD, and that’s worth a lot to me. I won’t do anything to jeopardize that—particularly by stomping around in a case where I’m not wanted.”

“Appreciate that, but you can relax,” Dwayne said. “That’s how I knew you’d be here. I’m the one who told Robbie to call you.”

“Really?” I said. “Well. I guess that explains why he didn’t think there’d be a problem with the police.”

“Yeah,” Dwayne said, laughing. “I figured maybe we can help each other—just like old times, right?” Before I could answer, he continued. “Yeah. Oh well, the deal is—” he paused and then started again. “Well, better if I start from the beginning, so you’ll understand what’s going on.” He opened a notebook that he’d brought to the table. “Last Friday—12 August—I get a call from my boss, Captain John Dwyer. I met with Captain Dwyer at 1630, and he told me that we had a potential high-profile missing person case coming in—that being Gina Fiore. It’s potentially high profile partly because Gina Fiore is a very pretty young woman and partly because her father Angelo Fiore is a longtime, well-respected Seattle businessman.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “He’s a big backer of the mayor.”

“Don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Dwayne said. He continued. “Our Special Investigations detail works only with certain high-profile cases. As you probably know, most MP cases stay in the precinct where they originate. If they heat up—that is, if they become more high profile, then sometimes the case gets bumped up to us. That’s what happened here. Somebody at West Precinct recognized the Fiore name, and even though the investigating officers had determined that she didn't appear to be an endangered person, they were smart enough to kick it over to us immediately. Captain Dwyer and I went over the report filed by the West Precinct officers who were first on scene. Then, at 1800—” he turned to Toni and said, “That’s 6:00 p.m. civilian time.”

“I know,” Toni said. She nodded toward me. “He does it all the time. Either way’s fine with me.”

“Good,” Dwayne continued. “At 1800, I went back out and interviewed the family again. The young lady had been missing since the previous evening. Even though her brother said nothing appeared out of place in the young woman’s condo, I suggested to the captain, and he agreed, that we send a CSI team out to document the scene. You know that this is something we don’t do very often—use CSI to investigate a scene where we’re not even certain a crime has taken place. In this case, we thought it might be prudent. We were worried that a normally reliable young woman had suddenly dropped off the grid.

“CSI did an examination on Saturday morning, 13 August starting at 0900. They spent almost three hours on scene. Of course, a few people had been in the condo before CSI got there while the scene was uncontrolled. But, her brother was first, and he said he found her condo door locked with a deadbolt, which is the norm for the young woman. There was no sign of forced entry. There was no sign of struggle and no signs of anything out of place. They noted that the purse, keys, and car were there. Aside from that, there were no clues at all, except for a behavior anomaly—she’d never done this sort of thing in the past.”

“The fact that all her stuff was still in the condo is pretty odd,” I said. “How about driver’s license, credit cards, cash, that sort of thing?”

“All still in her purse on the kitchen counter,” Dwayne said. “Strange, indeed.”

“Did you get—” I started to ask a question, but Dwayne raised his hand to cut me off.

“Hold up for a second and let me finish this thought. Then you can ask all the questions you want,” he said.

I nodded okay.

“I briefed the family on the results Saturday afternoon in a meeting at their house at fourteen hundred. I told them there was absolutely no initial sign of foul play. No signs of any sort of a struggle. I told them there was no reason to believe she’d been kidnapped, but we went ahead and set up a standard remote phone monitor on the parents’ line. My impression—they seemed to be scared, but under control.

“By Sunday morning, another day had gone by and we hadn’t heard from Gina directly nor had we received any sort of ransom call. Captain Dwyer and I decided that we wanted to get the word out and bring the public in. We made the decision to release the news to the press, which we did in a press conference Sunday afternoon—14 August—at 1500. The press has featured the story prominently since then. In fact, I’m told that a national news agency has picked up the story now.”

“I saw it on Fox News yesterday and today,” Toni said.

“There you are, then,” Dwayne said. “Now I know you know that, statistically speaking, 90 percent of adults who go missing do it voluntarily and eventually turn up. There’s no law against wanting to be left alone. With that in mind, you know it’s hard for us to allocate resources to track down adult missing person unless there’s some sign of a crime, or unless the adult has a history of mental illness. Technically, Gina Fiore meets neither of these criteria, so that means she falls through the cracks.” Dwayne paused for a second.

I took the opportunity to ask a question. “Dwayne, normally when someone bolts, they take their credentials and, usually, their car with them,” I said. “Does that alter your position at all regarding allocation of resources?”

“Good point, and yes it does alter our position. I’m a realist, which means I don’t imagine that the fact that Ms. Fiore is Angelo Fiore’s daughter hurts matters, either. That makes it hard for SPD to sit on the sidelines and not allocate resources to the case. Based on these two things, Captain Dwyer has authorized me to start an investigation into her disappearance. First, and most important, we want to find this young lady out of general principle—it’s our job. But we also damned sure don’t want to be accused of sleeping at the switch in case this turns out bad.”

“Whatever the motivation, I’m sure the family will be grateful,” I said.

Dwayne nodded.

“What’s the makeup of your team,” I asked.

Dwayne smiled. “Simple. Me and Gus. You probably haven’t met Gus.”

“Have not,” I said.

Dwayne reached for his phone and punched in a couple of numbers. A moment later he said, “Hey Gus, come in here a second. Got someone I want you to meet.”

Dwayne turned back to us. “While we wait for Gus, keep asking your questions. I’ll do the best I can to answer them now.”

“Okay,” I said. “First question. Can you get us copies of the initial report, your interview notes, and the CSI report?”

He held up his hands and starting ticking off the requirements with his fingers, one by one. “One, if you are engaged by the Fiores; two, if they will sign a written release; and three, if you’ll sign a confidentiality agreement, then yes to all of the above. Also, four, I want copies of the licenses and the CCW permits of anyone you’re going to have working the case. Nothing gets released to anyone not on the list.”

“Agreed. Next,” I said. “Does SPD have any people you’re already looking at in connection with the disappearance? Any leads, any witnesses?”

“None. Not yet. We haven’t even started. We’ll share whatever we develop and we’ll expect you to do the same thing.”

“Okay.” I looked at my notebook. “Next question. We’ll have a look at registered sex offenders. Along those lines, does your homicide unit have any serial killers they’re working on in this area that we should be concerned with?”

“I’ve already made a call to homicide to find out,” Dwayne said. “I haven’t heard back yet. I’ll check and get back to you with that as soon as they get back to me.”

“We need to visit the crime scene,” I said.

“Well, technically it’s not a crime scene,” Dwayne answered.

“True.” I said. “Whatever you call it, though, we’ll need to take a look at her apartment and her car.”

“CSI is done. The scene’s released. You can look anytime you want,” Dwayne said.

“Okay. More specifically, we’d like to look at the scene as an integrated team. Toni and I and you and your team—I mean, you and Gus. I’d like to know we’re all seeing things the same way.”

“Alright,” Dwayne answered, slowly. “That makes sense. Let me look at my schedule.” He studied his mobile phone for a second, then said, “Assuming we get the paperwork handled, how about tomorrow morning at eight? I have a ten o’clock meeting back here, but that should give us enough time.”

“Good,” I answered. “Make sure you bring the CSI report and all their exhibits—sketches, pictures, everything.”

“I will.”

“Okay,” I said. “Next, if we do take this case, how do you see us fitting in? How should we coordinate?”

Before Dwayne could answer, a short, round middle-aged man with only thin strands of hair and wearing a plaid sport coat entered the room.

“Ah,” Dwayne said. “Sergeant Gus Symanski, meet Danny Logan and his partner, Antoinette Blair.”

“Call me Toni,” Toni said, hopping out of her seat and extending her hand to Symanski.

“Charmed,” Symanski said to Toni, clearly not having expected to see someone like her when he entered the office. He recovered quickly though, and turned to me. “Danny Logan,” he said, reaching to shake my hand. “Lieutenant Brown’s mentioned you a few times over the past couple of years. Army Special Forces. War hero. Silver Star.”

“No Special Forces. No hero. Just regular infantry, 101st Airborne,” I corrected. I didn’t want anybody to think I’d been a snake-eater. And, despite the medals, I was uncomfortable with the hero moniker.

“Glad to meet you.” He handed me a business card that read Detective Goscislaw Symanski. “I was regular army during Desert Storm. First Infantry Division.”

“Really? First Infantry,” I said. “Big Red One. You guys were the point of the spear, weren’t you?”

“Damn straight,” Gus answered. “One day I’ll buy the beers, and we can bullshit about the army.”

I nodded at my fellow soldier and said, “Hooah.”

“Sit down, Gus,” Dwayne said. “I was just about to lay out some ground rules for our private investigator friends here.”

Gus took the fourth seat.

“Okay, Danny. You guys have more time and are probably going to be better paid than we are. You can focus on one case. We have—” he looked at Gus.

“Fourteen,” Gus said.

“Fourteen active cases,” Dwayne said. “So you may find yourselves in a better position to expedite things than we are.”

I nodded in agreement.

“Then again,” he continued, “We’re not going to be sitting on our well-dressed, bureaucratic asses over here, waiting for you to solve this case for us. We’ll be working our own plan, developing leads, conducting interviews—you know, police shit.”

I nodded again.

“Unfortunately, counting Gus and me, our department consists of two people. Fact is, we’re mostly managers these days. We coordinate the different assets of our organization to bring cases to a resolution. Now, you guys get to be one of our assets.”

“Sounds fun,” I said.

“We may be able to grab some people from different departments around here, from time to time. I assume you’ll be using the same procedures, just like in your army CID days. This means that the likelihood of tripping over our respective dicks—” he looked at Toni and said, “Pardon me, ma’am—no disrespect intended.”

“No offense taken,” Toni smiled.

“Anyway, the likelihood of us . . . bumping into each other during the investigation is pretty good. So the only way this can work between us is if we share everything—preferably before it happens. If you’re going to interview someone, you need to know if we haven’t already talked to them, and vice versa. We each need to know what the other team’s come up with. We’ve got to get coordinated and stay coordinated. We can’t be tripping over each other out there. Bad for business and with all the press likely to be around, we’ll look like jackasses. And that, my friend,” he said, pausing to straighten his tie as if he were about to go on camera, “is something we never do.”

“Understood. How about regular meetings?” I suggested.

“Agreed. Next on my list, actually,” he said. “Weekly’s probably not enough and daily’s probably too much. So we’ll go with weekly meetings for now supplemented by lots of phone calls. Make sense? Just to be clear: nobody makes a move without letting me know first. This is my case and my ass on the line. I want your help—probably even need your help. But it has to go my way.”