Fatal Flaw (4 page)

So much for a nice easy return to work, Sam thought as she set up the murder board in the conference room. A double murder and some hate mail would complicate any day, but the post-vacation gods had been particularly harsh on her.

Crime scene had scoured the kitchen in Carl’s restaurant and hadn’t found a shred of useful evidence. After autopsies, Lindsey reported that both victims had asphyxiated from the lack of oxygen in the freezer. She placed time of death at right around ten-thirty. From what Sam could deduce, someone had come into the restaurant, maybe pulled a gun on Carl and Daniel, ordered them into the freezer and locked them in. By the time Daniel’s father arrived at eleven-thirty, they were long gone.

What bothered her most was the bag of cash that had been left sitting on the counter. Why hadn’t the perp taken it?

“What’re you thinking, boss?” Freddie asked as he came into the conference room with sandwiches for both of them. His was an extra-large meat-lovers while hers was a small veggie. And she’d be the one to gain weight from the meal. Life wasn’t fair.

“I’m thinking about the money.”

“What money?”

“The deposit bag full of cash on the counter at Carl’s. If someone came in there and forced them into the freezer, why didn’t they take the money?”

“Because they weren’t there to rob the place?” he said over a mouth full of sub.

“Who couldn’t use a couple thousand extra dollars?”

“So you’re saying regardless of why they were there, they should’ve taken the money.”

“Not so much
should’ve.
It’s just weird to me that they didn’t. Hell, I would’ve.”

Her phone chimed with a text message from Nick. “Very fitting that you should turn the picture upside down since you’ve already turned my life upside down. Revenge is sweet, my love.
” Sam’s insides went all fluttery. How many more hours until she could go home to him?

“What’s with the goofy grin?” Freddie asked, bringing her back to reality. “Must be the
husband.
”

Sam snapped her phone closed and jammed it in her pocket. “We need to find out if Carl had any disgruntled former employees.”

“How do we do that?”

“We go through his office and see what we can find. Eat up.” She downed the last of her sandwich and chased it with a bottle of water, all the while wishing it were a diet cola. Nick’s doctor friend Harry had made her give up diet soda when she’d gone to him complaining of vicious stomach pains. She still hadn’t forgiven Harry for that diagnosis, even if it had cured her stomach ills. Stepping into the pit, she gestured for her colleague Detective Tommy “Gonzo” Gonzales and his partner Detective Arnold to join them.

“What’s up, Lieutenant?” Gonzo asked.

Sam noticed he looked tired, no doubt from the late nights he was keeping with the infant son he’d recently learned he had fathered with an ex-girlfriend. The baby was now living with him and his fiancée, Christina Billings, who also happened to be Nick’s chief of staff. Sam
loved
the way her personal and professional lives kept butting into each other. Not.

“I need a favor.” She told the detectives about the threatening card that had cropped up in the mail she’d received while she was away on her honeymoon. “I need some help going through the rest of it.”

Gonzo and Arnold took a long look at the huge piles of cards on the conference room table and then glanced at each other.

“I know, believe me. It sucks. But if someone is threatening a police officer and a U.S. senator, we can’t just ignore it.”

“Well, we could ignore it,” Freddie added, flashing her his best ingratiating smile, “but because the police officer is our lieutenant, and because the senator happens to be her husband, we’re not going to ignore it.”

“That’s not why,” Sam snapped. “We’d investigate no matter who was being threatened.”

“Of course we would,” Freddie said, contrite. “Joke gone bad. My apologies.”

“No, no,” Sam said. “I know you were kidding, and believe me, it burns my ass to have to devote department resources to something so stupid. Maybe we should just ignore it.”

“We’re not ignoring it,” Gonzo said. “Go work your homicide. We’ll dive in here and see what we’ve got.”

“Thank you,” Sam said, relieved that he got it. He always did, which made him one of her most valued colleagues and closest friends. “I, um, I need you to make sure you’re careful with any of the cards that came from Virginia.” She could feel her face heating with embarrassment. “Nick has to…you know…acknowledge them.”

“Got it,” Gonzo said without blinking an eye even though he probably had something he was dying to say about her high-profile love life.

“Let’s hit it, Cruz.”

When they were in the car on their way back to Carl’s, Freddie turned to her. “Sorry about the crack back there. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I know that. I
hate
all the attention Nick and I get in this city. I wish they’d get tired of us and move on to bothering someone else for a change.”

“I doubt they’ll get tired of you guys anytime soon, especially with him running in the November election.”

“It’s maddening. I just want to live my life in peace. Is that too much to ask?”

“Because you’re you and he’s him and people are interested in the two of you, I’d say that is indeed too much to ask.”

Sam scowled then moaned when her phone rang with the tone she’d set for the one reporter she’d learned to tolerate, Darren Tabor from the
Washington Star.

“What?” she barked into the phone, wondering if the guy was psychic or something.

“I can see that two weeks in the tropics didn’t do a thing for your surly disposition,” Darren said.

“What do you want, Darren?”

“While I was hurt to not be invited to the wedding, I wanted to say congratulations.”

“Thanks. Anything else?”

“What’ve you got on the murders at Carl’s?”

“Not a goddamned thing.”

“You’re not usually so forthcoming, Lieutenant.”

“I’d ask you not to quote me on that, but I suppose it’s too late to go off the record now.”

“I won’t quote you if you tell me it’ll compromise the case.”

And that, Sam thought, is why she took his calls. That and a favor he’d once done for her that she wouldn’t soon forget. “Go ahead and quote me this time. Maybe it’ll generate some leads. We can use all the help we can get.”

“May I soften the
goddamned
to just
damned?
”

Sam snorted. “By all means.”

“Keep me in mind if you have an exclusive or two you can share with your favorite reporter.”

“Bye, Darren.”

“I really think he’s growing on you,” Freddie said after she ended the call.

“The way fungus grows on a tree.”

That cracked up her partner. “You have a way with words, Lieutenant. Speaking of which, I’d prefer if you wouldn’t use the one that starts with
G
and ends with
D.
”

“You mean
good?
Or are you referring to
gonad?
Then there’s always
Galahad.”

Freddie’s scowl made her laugh.

They spent the afternoon pouring over Carl’s tidily kept books, bank accounts and personnel records and discovered that the last person he’d fired had been let go more than eight years earlier.

“Rules out a disgruntled ex-employee,” Sam said, frustrated. Rarely did she find herself in the midst of a homicide investigation without a single idea of what to do next. “We need a thread to pull, and we’ve got nada.”

“Maybe we should dig deeper into the kid,” Freddie said. “Perhaps he wasn’t as squeaky clean as his father thought.”

“Entirely possible. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But let’s go find out what we can about him.”

They spent three hours talking to teachers, coaches, the parents of Daniel’s friends as well as his devastated girlfriend and came away with an impression that was exactly in keeping with what his father had told them—a good kid on the right path with a bright future ahead of him.

“Depressing,” Freddie said on the way back to HQ. “The kid had everything in the world to live for.”

“This wasn’t random,” Sam said. “Someone went in there looking to take out one of them and the other was collateral damage. Since Daniel was as squeaky clean as it gets, my money is on Carl.”

“The guy was totally innocuous. Who’d want him dead?”

“I have no freaking clue,” she said.

Joseph Alvarez was waiting for them when they returned to HQ.

Sam’s stomach clenched the way it used to when she was strung out on diet cola.

“Lieutenant,” Joseph said, his face lined with grief and exhaustion. “Tell me you’ve figured out who killed my Danny.”

“Come into my office, Mr. Alvarez.”

She gestured for him to have a seat and leaned back against her desk. “I wish I could tell you we have something, but we don’t.”

His face fell with disappointment, which tugged at her. He’d already had more than his share.

“We suspect this wasn’t a random crime, but rather something planned and calculated. We believe one of them was targeted and the other was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What we don’t know is what either of them could’ve done to bring this about. From all reports, both were well liked and respected. Mr. Olivo was low-key and tended to keep to himself.” She took a deep breath. “I’m afraid we’ve hit a dead end. We don’t have a shred of evidence pointing to a third person in that kitchen last night.”

Dejected, he looked down at his feet. “So the person who did this to my Danny could get away with it?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it. I’d like to go through Danny’s room. While it might seem invasive, we need to do it anyway. If he has a computer, we’ll remove it for analysis. It would be quicker to have your permission so we don’t have to get a warrant.”

“Whatever it takes.”

“We’ll work every angle we can, but we’ll never give up. I promise you that.”

“I’ve read about you in the paper. I know how tenacious you can be.”

“I’ll put that tenacity to good use on Danny’s case, and I’ll keep you informed of every development. I’ll do my best for you, Mr. Alvarez, and for Danny.”

“I suppose I can’t ask for anything more than that.”

After he left, Sam stood there for a long time rethinking every second since she arrived at Carl’s just after midnight. Finally, she turned and called for Freddie.

They tore apart Daniel Alvarez’s bedroom as well as the basement computer room where he liked to hang out. The computer was sent to the lab for further scrutiny, but they found nothing else that would be useful to the investigation. Unlike many of his peers, Daniel had no deep dark secrets he kept hidden from his father. Sam was relieved they didn’t find anything that would add to Joseph’s grief, but the search hadn’t done a thing to further the investigation.

They had similar luck—or lack thereof—at Carl Olivo’s small house. All his paperwork was in perfect order. The house was neat and tidy and held absolutely no hints to explain why someone might want him dead.

Defeated and running on fumes after the night without sleep, Sam and Freddie returned to HQ to relieve Gonzo and Arnold who’d spent the day opening Sam’s mail. The grand total, at the end of the long day, was 4,132. More than thirty-five hundred cards had been sent to Nick’s office, the rest to Sam’s. Not one of the other 4,131 cards had contained a threat—thinly veiled or otherwise.

“Is it weird that I read maybe ten of the cards that were sent to me and managed to find the single threatening one?” Sam asked Freddie as they polished off a pizza just after nine.

“You think someone put it right on top where you were sure to see it?”

“It’s possible.”

“Which would mean it came from someone here. Who else besides Lieutenant Stahl would do something like that to you?”

“No one probably, but who knows? Someone could’ve walked in the front door, handed the card to an admin who dropped it on my desk. Or handed it to any cop and asked them to give it to me. Because of the wedding, no one would think twice about tossing it on my desk.”

“But it had been through the postage machine, so that rules out hand delivery.”

“Baffling,” Sam said. She rolled up the paper towel she’d used as a napkin and sent it arching into the garbage can. “Let’s clean this up and get out of here. I need to go home and tend to these paper cuts.”

“The hazards of this job never end.”

“I hear ya. Thanks for staying late.”

“No problem.”

“So how’s it going with Elin?”

“We’ve been seeing each other here and there since the wedding.”

“Define ‘seeing each other.’”

“Why do I have to define it?”

“Are we talking going out to dinner or all sex all the time?”

Flustered, he scowled at her. “None of your business.”

“Ahhh, sex fest revisited. I get it.”

“Whatever you say.”