33

One good thing about going to headquarters at ten o’clock on a Thursday was that you could blend in with the crowd on the first floor where the property room was located. After morning arraignments, the arrestees from the night before lined up on the Church Street side of headquarters to retrieve their property. That day people were bunched around the side door, waiting for their turn at the Property Department’s window. Riley and Reese breezed past them into the main hallway, past the elevator, to the back of the building, and up to the door where the coppers who worked Property came and went.

The door was old, as old as the building, having never been replaced. The word Property was painted in red across the frosted glass. It had no swipe; you either had a key to get in, or you didn’t. Not even the commissioner could get inside after the personnel assigned there went home for the day. Reese gave the heavy wooden door a good double knock, so the RTs up front at the window would hear it.

Helen Downey, who’d been with the department for fifty years, opened the door a crack and peeked out.

“Shane!” She threw the door open wide. Helen was straight off the boat from Dublin and made no secret of her crush on Reese. “What brings you to see me today?” It came out more like: Wha brings ya ta see ma to-da? Lauren didn’t care why she let them in. Whatever works, she thought, giving Helen a huge smile.

“And Lauren, how are you feeling, love?” Helen leaned in and gave her a hug. In her white shirt, navy-blue pleated pants, and tastefully tinted red hair, Helen resembled an aging airline stewardess; all she needed was the tiny scarf tied around her neck.

“I’ll live,” Lauren replied, still smiling. “Thanks for asking.”

“Of course you’ll live! You got the Irish in you, Miss Riley. We’re hard to kill. Just ask the British.” She gave Lauren a wink and backed farther into the Property room to let them all the way in, the door falling locked behind them.

“We need your help with something, Helen,” Reese told her, lowering his voice. “We have to ask you a few questions, but it cannot leave this room.”

“What do you need, darlin’?” she whispered back, eyes glancing over to Sadie Covington, who was helping a sad-looking man at the window. Sadie was a notorious gossip.

Pulling a copy of the property sheet from his back pocket, he put it in her hand. “I need you to see if the property on this form, especially the gun, is still here. And we need to know if anyone else has come looking for it lately.”

Helen perused the sheet. “It’s a homicide case. Everything should still be here. No statute of limitations on murder.”

Reese nodded along with her. “Exactly. Can you get the chain of custody sheet so we can look at it?”

“For you, Shane? Anything. Be back in a jiff.” She walked toward the side room where the files were kept, disappearing behind another heavy door.

“Laying it on pretty thick, weren’t we?” Lauren asked, leaning up against one of the desks.

“What? My attraction to women knows no age limits. Real men know mature women are sexy as hell. That’s good news for you; you’re getting a little long in the tooth.”

“I’m thirty-nine.”

“Soon to be forty, according to my calculations.” He shook his head. “You have officially passed into straight-up cougar range. You should embrace it. Get a younger man in your life.”

“I have a younger man in my life, and he drives me crazy,” she pointed out.

“Only because we have a strictly platonic relationship. Believe me, if you were getting a piece of this”—he motioned grandly from his head all the way down to his toes—“you’d be one happy lady.”

“I think I’ll just stay single, thank you very much.” After her disastrous affair with her ex-husband the year before, Lauren had put a moratorium on her sex life. Not that there was ever any danger of her and Reese crossing any lines.

“Plenty of cats available at the shelter this time of year,” he told her. “No better time to start your brood than now.”

Frowning, Helen appeared in the doorway holding two pieces of paper. “This is odd,” she said, smoothing a yellowing sheet on the desk in front of her. It was the original of the form Reese had handed to her, except that as the evidence moved from the lab back to Property and out again, various handwritten notations had been added to the back page.

“It says here the gun went to the lab the night of the homicide. Came back in March of 1992.” Her knobby finger traced its way down the page. “Here, in April of 2006, the lab checked the gun back out. It was returned in August. On September 5th of 2006, that same gun was checked out by the lead detective, Richard Schultz. It doesn’t show it was ever checked back in.”

“Did Schultz actually sign for the gun?”

She turned the paper around and pointed out the signature. “Right here.”

“I knew it,” Lauren said.

“Has anyone else asked to see this evidence or the property sheet? Recently, I mean. Last two weeks maybe?” Reese pressed.

Helen shrugged. “Not that I know of. But if they did, they didn’t leave with it, did they?”

“Ok, Helen, now this is important.” Reese leaned across the desk, palms down, fingers splayed over the blotter. “I want you to make a copy, put it in the file, and give me the original with the signature. Don’t worry, we’ll get it back to you when we’re done. You won’t get in any trouble.”

“I can’t give you the original property slip,” she protested. “They don’t ever leave here.”

“This slip itself is important. It’s evidence in a homicide investigation. That’s why I need it. And it’s important that you don’t tell anyone about this. I promise when we’re done you’ll get it back. Have I ever lied to you before?”

Her watery blue eyes softened. “No.”

“Please make a copy, put that in the file, and call me if anyone else wants to see it.”

Helen gathered up her paperwork and disappeared into the side room. Coming out four minutes later, she handed Reese a manila envelope. “No one’s come asking about it, as far as I could tell. Just you two. Don’t let anything happen to this.”

“You know I won’t,” he said, taking it from her. He gave her one of his dazzling smiles, but Helen still looked distressed at breaching her sworn duties to protect the property sheets.

Lauren tried to sound reassuring as she told her, “I promise we’ll take the blame if anything blows back on you. We wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t really, really important.”

“I trust you two. Never done me wrong, yet. But I don’t want it getting around I do this sort of thing.”

Chucking her gently under her double chin, Reese said, “It’s our secret, Helen. See you soon.”

They left the poor woman wringing her hands near the door, still unsure if she made the right call or not. Lauren felt bad for putting Helen in that position, but Ricky’s signature on that document proved he tampered with, and probably destroyed, evidence in a homicide case. That piece of paper was a crucial bit of evidence.

“You wait here. I’m going up to the Homicide office to check in with Joy, tell her I’m taking off the next couple of days.” Still holding the envelope, Reese hit the button for the elevator.

“I’ll just wait here for you here with my thumb up my ass,” Lauren told him as the doors opened.

“Better take the stick out first,” he advised as the doors shut in front of him.

Cocky, immature, unprofessional—

Lauren’s thoughts were interrupted by a tap on the shoulder.

Swiveling around, she found herself face to face with Vince Schultz. Her hand reflexively went to her gun at the small of her back. Vince took a step back with his hands up. “Whoa! I didn’t mean to startle you, Lauren. I just wanted to say hi and see how you’re doing.”

Struck dumb for a second, Lauren stared at the man who had shoved a knife between her ribs. His pockmarked face, his graying dark hair, his blue uniform shirt stretched over his broad chest. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, the rational part of her brain was telling her, Smile, right now. Don’t let on that you know anything.

It took every ounce of undercover police training she had to keep herself together.

“I’m sorry.” She managed what she hoped was a smile. “I’m a little jumpy these days.”

“Yeah,” he laughed, hitching his thumbs in his gun belt. “I get that. I’m glad you’re doing all right. Do they have any leads on who hurt you?”

She noted he said hurt, not attacked, or stabbed, or tried to kill. Hurt, like he had hurt her feelings, not left her to die on a dirty carpet in her own office. She shook her head. “Right now, they have nothing.” Lauren was not going to give anything away to this piece of garbage.

“And your old boyfriend? Do they think it’s connected?”

Realizing as she stood in front of him that he was taller than Joe, like the killer had been, she took a step back. The dream from the night before came rushing in, the brain and blood on the tire iron, the copper taste in her mouth. She blinked hard twice, trying to keep her focus.

“They’re looking at all the angles,” she replied in the most neutral tone she could muster. Standing so close, Lauren could smell Vince’s bad breath. Her eyes fixed on the gold chain around his neck and the way his white chest hair curled around it. Can he hear my heart? The one he tried to stab? Her mind raced as she tried to control the panic rising up in her. It’s about to beat out of my chest.

“I think it’s pretty sick, that someone is running around …”

His voice trailed off in her ears as her eyes slid down to his black city-issue boots. Pant legs stuffed inside, laced up high. Those have my blood on them. Her pulse raced. Soaked in the laces or stuck in the cracks of the leather from when he stomped on my head. Or from when he walked through the blood pooling on the carpet next to me or spatter from Joe’s crushed head. He washed them, I know he washed them, but there’s always a trace …

“What’s going on here?” Reese’s voice cut through her thoughts, bringing her back to the dirty hallway in front of the elevator whose car just deposited Reese next to her.

Head reeling from the images embedded in it, Lauren said, “Vince just stopped to ask how I’m doing. I think you were right, Reese. I shouldn’t have come here. Not with all the medications I’m on. Not yet.”

Reaching past her, Vince stuck out his hand to Reese, who shook it without hesitation. “Good to see you,” Vince told her partner.

Reese answered with his normal, pleasant, friendly tone. “You too, man. Let me get my partner out of this place. I told her not to come.”

“Yeah. It takes a long time to recover from those kind of injuries,” Vince said. “Don’t overdo it.”

Reese held up the manila envelope Helen had given him. Nothing was written on it. It could have contained anything, but Reese waved it in Vince’s face. “Sorry, Vince, but we’ve got to go. I got what I came here for, and we’re running late.”

Vince’s eyes ran over the folder, possibly trying to figure out if it was something for Lauren’s case or totally unrelated. Lauren could sense he wanted to linger, to fish for more information. Him coming up to her in the hall was not a coincidence, she was sure, but something of a calculated risk. He wanted to gauge what they knew.

“No problem.” Vince stepped back as he spoke. “I hope you feel better, Lauren.”

I hope someone straps you to an ant hill and pours syrup on you. “Bye, Vince. And thank you.” For letting me know you’re a remorseless piece of shit who covers up an eighteen-year-old kid’s murder.

Lauren and Reese left Vince Schultz standing in the hallway. Waiting until they were in the confines of the car, Reese let out a long breath. “It took everything I had not to throttle him.”

“My first instinct was to shoot him,” Lauren said bitterly. “It’s my only instinct, actually.”

Sliding the manila folder onto the dash, Reese threw the car into drive. “I called the lab. The samples are still there. All we need is a comparison, and it’s game over.”

“We could have gotten one from Vince just now. Punched him in the nose, gathered some of the blood. The tests would show the familial link.”

Reese dismissed that idea. “While that would have been fun, then it would be all subpoenas and hearings and lawyers. They could get to Rita. No, we’re going for the straight-up abandoned sample from Vince’s little brother, Sam. I don’t want a family tree. I want Sam Schultz’s direct match.”

“And how are we going to get that?” Lauren was trying to bring her heart rate down, breathing in deeply, then exhaling slowly. “I think he’ll notice a tall blonde and a biracial guy following him around all day trying to recover his used Kleenex.”

Reese fished around in his back pocket, eyes never leaving the road, until he produced another glossy piece of paper. He passed it over to Lauren. “These were on everyone’s desks today. I snagged one when I was in the office.”

It was a fancy invitation to Sam Schultz’s campaign kick-off party that coming Saturday night, December 1st, at the new Strand Hotel. Formal attire required, only two hundred dollars a person.

“You want to crash his party?” Lauren cocked an eyebrow.

He shrugged. “Why not? I look good in a suit.”

“Because Vince and Ricky both know me and know I’d never go to a political fundraiser in a million years.”

“We know for sure where our suspect is going to be Saturday night. We know he won’t be expecting us.” Reese hit the horn on a man turning without using his signal in front of them. “You need to call your ex-husband and have him buy two tickets under his name.”

Mark Hathaway had always been a big donor to political campaigns. Lauren used to hate when he’d drag her out in a sequined dress to some function or other. She’d cringe in a corner most of the night, nursing a drink, making awkward small talk with other donors’ wives while her husband schmoozed and worked the crowd. Reese was right, Mark buying tickets wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

“Since when do you make the operational plans?” Lauren asked, reluctant to revisit that portion of her life with Mark.

“Since you got put on injured reserve,” he shot back. “Let’s do this. We get the sample, call the DA, tell him what’s up. Carl Church gets the lab to rush it through. We get a match, all the brothers go to jail.”

“Sam’s DNA on the gun doesn’t prove Vince attacked me,” she pointed out.

“It’s enough for us to get search warrants for his apartment, his car, his work locker. Vince Schultz is a slob. He’s probably wearing the same crusty uniform he had on the night he stabbed you. You know those are the same boots; he’s too cheap to buy new ones. The knife is probably on the all-purpose tool on his belt. He has no idea we’re on to him or his brothers. If we’re lucky, we can nail them for you and for Gabriel without exposing Rita. I’m telling you, this is the best plan.”

She thought back to the way Vince had stood there, as if it was nothing that she had been hurt. Like she’d fallen down the stairs or got rear-ended in the parking lot. He had stabbed her from behind and then mercilessly cracked her in the head. He hadn’t been trying to hurt her, he’d been trying to destroy her. The way Joe had been destroyed by a tire iron. The way Gabriel Mohamed had been destroyed by a bullet. She fingered the metal clasp on the back of the envelope.

Well, she thought as she watched pedestrians cross in front of the car at a red light, her bitterness turning to anger, it’s my turn now.