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Darby
I sat silent in our Flexion as Mark drove to my apartment. Genova, Rick, and Captain Moustakas were in cars behind us.
My stomach kept threatening to rebel. Between what Pierce had told us, and the fact I had no clue what to expect at my apartment, I was in danger of giving up my lunch.
I clamped my hands into fists. You can do this, Darb. It’s just stuff. It doesn’t matter.
But it did.
My space had been violated. The officer saying it was “totally trashed” left little doubt I was about to venture into a scene which would otherwise be called a disaster.
Mark looked at me occasionally. I kept my eyes straight ahead, glad he hadn’t said anything since we’d hastily left headquarters.
I needed that silence. I was about to break.
When I drive, the trip between my home and the office takes about fifteen minutes, twenty in bad traffic.
Mark did it in eight, and still managed to drive cautiously enough that it didn’t disrupt my queasy stomach.
Although the way he pulled to a stop outside the police line had me looking with longing at the bushes near the front door.
I led the way to my building, trepidation growing with every step. What had they done? Was “totally trashed” truly what had happened, or was it just a mess?
Had they been looking for my weapons and ammo stashes?
Had they found them?
I was going to have to come clean.
At the door, we were waved through by another officer. “Detective Malcolm is waiting for you,” she said.
I nodded.
Mark put his hand at the small of my back as we followed through.
I didn’t have to look to know it was him; the tingle was enough. Even though I’d yelled at him earlier about touching me, I chose to ignore it. I had enough on my mind, and in a crazy way, it was comforting to know he was right there.
“Detective Shaw,” Detective Samantha Malcolm spotted us and crossed. I recognized her from our days in patrol. She’d gained her detective’s shield a few months before I did. She was taller than me—not hard to do—with curly brown hair that was pretty when it was under control, and crazy bushy otherwise. Today was the former, rather than the latter.
I shook her extended hand. “Samantha, it’s been a while.”
“I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances.” She turned to Mark. “This must be the partner.”
I did a round of introductions. The captain gave his blessing on having Genova and Rick present but asked the civilians to remain outside.
Genny put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m here if you need me.”
I nodded. To Detective Malcolm, I said, “I don’t have many details. What can you tell me?”
“We got word the alarm had been tripped a little more than an hour ago. We didn’t attempt to contact you because we had officers in the area. Two of our patrol guys came by, found your door open and the alarm blaring. Your downstairs neighbor said she saw someone running out the door when she checked.”
“Did she get a look at them?”
Malcolm shook her head. “Dark clothes, hoodie. Not much more than that. Sweet old lady.”
I smiled a bit despite the circumstances. “She is.” I paused a beat. “How long have you been on scene?”
“Thirty minutes. CSU got here a few minutes before my partner and me. I’m assuming this isn’t in your normal housekeeping ways?” Samantha pushed through my front door and waved her hand for me to follow.
Mark and the captain trailed behind.
I got my first look and shuddered.
All of my pictures had been ripped from the wall, my furniture overturned and broken, and my belongings strewn everywhere.
I took a deep breath.
Mark’s hand went to my back again.
“Well, it was a lot cleaner when I left this morning.”
Samantha offered a rueful smile. “They did tear it up.”
“They?” Mark said. “I thought you said the neighbor only saw one person?”
“The way it looks, do you think one person could have done it in the time they had?”
They’d probably had three, maybe five minutes. My alarm would call the service after not being disarmed for two minutes. Because of my line of work, they didn’t call me at that point, just sent the nearest set of officers.
Malcolm talked, but I didn’t hear much. I was too busy looking around.
Behind me, I could hear Mark, the captain, and Malcolm talking. What they were saying, I didn’t know. My mind was elsewhere.
They’d literally broken my armchair in pieces.
The arms were parted from the back and seat, and the legs broken off. I only saw two of the classically styled wooden legs in my living room.
“Darby? Detective Shaw?” Malcom’s soothing voice called me back.
I turned.
“Do you know of anyone who may have wanted to do this? Who wanted to hurt you?”
“You do follow the news, don’t you?”
“You know I have to ask.”
I nodded. “I know. Can I...can I look around for a few minutes? Maybe give my brain a chance to believe what I’m seeing? This feels surreal.”
“Sure. Take your time, but don’t touch anything if you can help it.”
Mark put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t.”
“Thanks, Detective Herman,” she said. “I’ll be somewhere in the scene when you’re done. I know it’s a wreck, but try to see if you can tell whether anything is missing, okay?”
“I’ll keep my eyes open,” I said.
Mark and I stepped out of the tiny tiled foyer and into the major part of my flat.
Mark might as well not have been there. I ignored him as I took in the scene. My living room and dining room were basically total losses. Most of my dishes had been smashed, and even my cast iron cookware had suffered damage, with one of the handles broken off. It had also cracked the cooking surface most of the way through.
I shuddered to think of how much power it would take to break the skillet.
In the short hall between my bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen, pictures had fallen off the wall. No, check that, they’d been ripped from it, the tiny holes from the nails now larger than the diameter of my finger.
So much for getting my security deposit back.
The pictures themselves had had the glass shattered. A picture of my mother, one of the few I still had, had been pulled from the frame and crumpled into a ball.
Though she’d been abusive, and died at the hand of my father, to see the sheer lack of respect tore at my heart.
My bathroom drawers had been pulled out and dumped. Makeup and toiletries were everywhere.
So were bullets.
I’d had a small cache under the sink, including one gun and ammo to reload, both in bricks and in magazines.
The magazines were empty, the boxes of bullets dumped. Three-hundred plus rounds littered the floor, amongst blush, toilet paper, and tampons. To top it off, shampoo, conditioner, and other various hair products had had the caps taken off and the resulting goo covered everything, including the five-hundred-dollar gun I’d purchased less than six months ago.
They’d wanted to destroy and inflict as much pain and damage as possible.
Still, that level of destruction couldn’t compare to my bedroom.
Total loss would be a kind description. It would have looked better had a tornado blown through. I could actually understand a tornado doing this kind of damage. Humans? Not so much. It added to the cruelty of the situation.
I raised a hand to my forehead and rubbed, my eyes skimming over the destruction. It was too much.
Yet I managed to hold it together.
Until my eyes fell on the body of a teddy bear on one side of my overturned dresser, the head of the bear on the opposite end.
I let out a cry, fell to my knees, and buried my face in my hands. Tears cascaded down my cheeks, and I sobbed so hard I felt like my chest was going to explode.
Mark put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “It’s okay, Darb,” he said in a near whisper.
I shook my head and took a deep breath, willing myself back under control. “The bear. Caleb gave it to me. On the scene of...when we first met.”
He squeezed tighter. I’d first met him at the scene of my mother’s murder. He’d been a young patrol officer. The detective, Caleb Sherman, had become my mentor until his retirement about five years ago.
Mark’s electrical energy somehow bolstered me, making me stronger than I really felt.
“I remember. We kept them in the backs of the cruisers. I think I gave it to him to give to you,” he said.
I nodded and took a jagged breath. “I’d never had a bear before.”
Though his grip didn’t increase, the electrical current in my shoulder did. Anger? Could that increase the sensation? I’d never felt it before, at least not to notice.
“We’re going to find him, Darb.”
I nodded again and wiped the tears away. Then I put my hand on his arm and levered up. Since I’d gotten the news, his touch had not been painful. Or maybe I was in too much shock to notice.
I looked up at his green eyes. “There’s no way one person could have done this in such a short time.”
“You think it’s related to our case?”
I waved at my bedroom. “They didn’t take any guns, at least not that I can tell. Same goes for the ammo. They left it. Made a lot of it difficult, if not impossible to use, but they left it. Any burglar would have taken them because they could make an assload of money off stolen guns. This had to be personal.”
He lifted his chin. “The DSHA?”
“Could be a distraction, trying to divert focus from Prairie’s murder.”
“We’ve gone after a lot of bad guys in our careers. You’re a public figure. It doesn’t have to be this case.”
“We’d have gotten word if one of our convicts had escaped.”
“Doesn’t have to be one we’ve caught.”
I blew out a breath. We had cold cases. But not anything where we’d felt like we were close to catching the perp.
I looked at him again.
His jaw was firmly set, mimicking the anger simmering inside me.
“Let’s go talk to Samantha,” I said.
We found her back in the living room, instructing the CSU techs how to handle everything.
Detective Malcolm looked back at me when she finished. “Your prints are current in the system, aren’t they?”
I nodded. “They were redone in the spring.”
“Who has been in your apartment in the last couple weeks?”
I thumbed at Mark. “This one.”
Samantha flicked her gaze to my partner. “Your prints up to date?”
“I may need to redo them. It’s been a few years.”
“Make sure it gets done when you get back to HQ. How about the two people who were with you besides the captain?”
“Civilians,” I said. “Richard Pierce has never been inside my apartment. Genova Murphie...she was here about a month ago.”
“Anyone else?” She made a note on her glass. “Other friends? Lovers? Family?”
I named a handful of friends.
The longer the list got, the more Samantha frowned. “You’re getting to be popular. See anything missing?”
I shook my head. “It’s tough to tell. I’d like to have permission to seal up and help look through.”
She shook her head. “We haven’t gotten everything photographed yet. I did notice you had a couple weapons on the floor. How many should be here?”
I shifted my gaze briefly to Mark. “Eight.”
Samantha raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, but I thought you said eight.”
“That’s what’s in the apartment. I keep an extra in my personal car, and three more on my person, including my service weapon.”
She nodded toward Mark. “He know about this?”
“Not all of it,” he said. “Darb, are you kidding me?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t felt secure since the kidnapping.”
“I’m going to need a list of the makes, models, and calibers. And how much ammo do you think you had in here?”
Mark scowled.
I winced. Would he flip? Only one way to find out. I blew out a breath. “Over five thousand rounds. Probably. Maybe closer to six.”
Mark’s hand went to his neck. “Darb, I thought I was mostly joking earlier.”
“You try being in my position.”
Samantha redirected. “Is there any way you can be certain how much you had here?”
“I’ve invoiced a lot of the costs to the department in the last two years. They’re paying for about half my ammo. The captain has those records.”
Both Samantha and Mark’s eyebrows shot up.
“How’d you get them to agree to that?” Mark asked.
“Being kidnapped by three government agencies helped.” I shrugged. “I barely had the question out before they offered.”
“This would be why you haven’t gotten a new ride?”
“Pretty much.”
He crossed his arms and looked to Detective Malcolm. “Huh.”
She winked at me. “I don’t tell my partner everything either. I’ll talk to your department head, see if we can rustle up some data. Would that include the calibers?”
“Yeah.”
Samantha made some more notes on her glass. “And cases? Anything current?”
Mark and I exchanged a look, and he said, “We’re hip deep in a murder.”
“Anything important, or just run-of-the-mill?”
“All murders are important, Samantha,” I said.
“I didn’t mean it like that. Is this higher profile than average?”
Mark nodded. “DSHA agent.”
Samantha blinked. “Tricky. Do you think they could have perpetrated all of this?”
“Do you know what they wanted to do to me two years ago?”
“I remember the news, the scuttlebutt.”
“Then you should know they would be able to perpetrate something like this.”
She frowned. “But why would they want to mess with you when you’re trying to figure out who murdered one of their agents?”
Mark and I exchanged a look.
He said, “That’s confidential information requiring a secure room.”
Samantha’s eyebrows flew up. “Secure room?”
We nodded.
“You just made this the most interesting B-and-E I’ve had in a while. Sorry, Darby.”
“I understand the sentiment.” I took a deep breath and looked around. “So, should I seal up?”
“Yeah, I’ll make sure a photographer can help out unless you’d like to do the honors, Detective Herman?”
“I can do it,” he said. “But a question, when do you think you’ll clear the scene? Obviously, she’s not going to be able to stay here tonight. We’ll need to get someone in to clean up.”
“More like shovel everything into a dumpster and start over,” I said ruefully.
Samantha touched my shoulder. “I bet you can salvage more than you think, Darby.” She turned back to Mark. “I’m going to guess this is going to take a few days to go through, figure out what’s missing, if anything, and finally release the scene.”
He nodded. “I’ve got a camera in the back of our cruiser. Some sealer, too. Darb, why don’t you come with me and have a breather. We can send Genova and Rick on their way.”
I nodded slowly. “Sure.”
“We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Take your time. I’ll be here,” Samantha said.
I sent another look back at the destruction, shuddered, then followed Mark. I hadn’t seen the captain inside, not since I’d gone back to my bedroom, but he was downstairs talking to the sergeant. Genova and Rick stood not too far from him, talking quietly. They looked up when we came down the stairs.
Genova crossed to me and put her arms around me. “Sweetie, is it as bad as they said?”
I nodded as she hugged. “Whoever did this went for utter destruction. I’ll be lucky if I can find any clothes that aren’t torn apart.”
She pulled back, her eyebrows drawn. “That bastard.”
“Do you think it’s because of the Rasmussen case?” Rick said.
Mark shrugged. “We have no info to go on. Could be some ass who had it in for her already. Could be completely random.”
“It’s not likely random,” Genova said, looking from me to Rick.
I shook my head. “No, not terribly likely. It was targeted. They found all my guns. Most, if not all, are going to have to be cleaned.”
She winced. “But they weren’t stolen?”
“To be determined.”
She nodded. “I can stay a while. But I need to take Rick back to the SHS garage.”
“I can take a cab,” Rick said. “Don’t worry about me.”
Genova frowned. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “No sense in you leaving only to come back.” He put his hand on her arm and left it there longer than I’d expect from a friend.
“Okay. I’ll call you when I get back to the office.”
Mark sent me a significant look, one eyebrow raised. “See?” his look seemed to say.
I rolled my eyes.
Rick shifted his attention to Mark and me. “I want to assist your office in any way I can. Whatever I’m able to tell you, I will.”
Mark offered his hand; they shook. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Pierce.”
He left.
Genova watched him for a moment, then turned back to me. “You’re staying with me tonight, sweetie.”
Mark cleared his throat. “No, she’s not. There’s not a chance in hell she’s going to stay with a civilian.”
“Hey, wait a second,” I said, hands on hips. “I should get a say in this.”
“Sure. You get a say. As long as you’re staying at my place.”
“I see no reason I shouldn’t stay at Genny’s or even Simon’s.”
“Do you want whoever turned your flat into a war zone to come after your friend? Your father?”
I crossed my arms. “I am not staying at your home.”
“Darby, I swear, you’re staying with me, or I’m going to arrange for you to stay in a holding cell. I’d rather do that—where I know you’re safe—than have you stay with a civvy.”
“Try running that one by Douglass or the captain. I’ll bet your scenario lasts two seconds.”
“I don’t care. Stay with me at my place, or in a holding cell.”