Fatal Flaw Page 4

  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 t
idy 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.”

  “Did you ever go out with that girl your mother fixed you up with? The one from church?”

  “Yeah. No spark. She just didn’t do it for me. She was a perfectly nice girl, though.”

  “I’m sure she was if your mother liked her.” As they talked, they boxed up all the cards and letters. “So let me get this straight—while you continue to burn up the sheets with Elin, you’re dating these girls your mother fixes you up with.”

  “Don’t make it sound like I’m cheating on Elin. She knows I’ve been out with other women, and she’s fine with it.”

  “And are you fine with her going out with other guys?”

  “As long as she doesn’t sleep with them, I don’t mind.”

  Except he looked like he minded. He looked like he minded quite a lot. “Freddie, come on. Of course you do. You’re playing with fire.”

  Throwing up his hands, he said, “What do you want me to say? My mother still hates her, and I’m sick of being in the middle of it.”

  “I thought you were ready to tell your mother Elin is the woman you want.”

  “I thought I was too,” he said, dejected. “Every time I try to broach the subject she comes up with another girl she wants me to meet. It’s like she knows what I want to tell her but doesn’t want to hear it.”

  “In the meantime, the woman you might or might not love is dating other guys. But as long as you’re fine with that—”

  “I’m not fine with it!” He ran his hands through his dark hair, leaving it disheveled. “I hate it! But how can I ask her to be exclusive when I’m not?”

  “You didn’t ask my opinion, but it’s high time you took control of this situation. It’s making you crazy.”

  “I know,” he said, slumping into his chair.

  “You’re almost thirty years old, Freddie. At some point you have to live your own life and not necessarily the life your mother has in mind for you.”

  “I’m not entirely a mama’s boy. If she’d had her way, I never would’ve stepped foot in the police academy.”

  “And what a waste that would’ve been. You just proved my point.”

  “Huh,” he said. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way before.”

  “Go home and get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “See you then.”

  Chapter 5

  Freddie walked the boxes of cards to Sam’s office and piled them in the corner as she’d requested. As he was locking the office door, Lieutenant Stahl came around the corner.

  “You’re working late tonight, Detective,” Stahl said, his jowls quivering with every word.

  “As are you, Lieutenant.”

  “What’s kept you here so late?”

  “Nothing special. Just taking care of some paperwork.” Sifting through four thousand cards certainly counted as paperwork. Rather clever, if he did say so himself. “You?”

  Stahl glanced at the closed door to Sam’s office—the office that used to be his—and then back at Freddie. “Nothing.”

  “Did you need Lieutenant Holland for something?”

  Stahl’s fat face twisted into a scowl. “Absolutely not.”

  The animosity between the two lieutenants was no secret to anyone in the department. Stahl had made more than a few threats toward Sam, especially since he’d tried and failed to punish her for hooking up with Nick during the investigation into Senator O’Connor’s murder. Sam believed Stahl had fed information to her ex-husband’s defense attorney that led to Peter’s release from jail, but they’d been unable to prove that. Yet.

  “I’ll see you later then,” Freddie said, getting out while the getting was good. The last person on the entire police force he wished to spend any extra time with was the lieutenant who used to oversee the detectives’ squad. No one had anything good to say about the guy.

  As always after an encounter with Stahl, Freddie gave Sam a quick call to let her know the unsavory lieutenant had been skulking around the detectives’ pit after hours.

  “What the hell is he doing?” she asked.

  “Who knows?”

  “I really wouldn’t put this card thing past him. How awesome would it be if the lab came back with his prints all over it?”

  “Extremely awesome, but we’ll never get that lucky.”

  “Sad but true. He knows I’ve got my eye on him. We’ll trip him up eventually.”

  Freddie got into his Mustang, which was no less dilapidated after an expensive day in the shop, and turned on the engine to start the heat. The night was chilly for mid-April in Washington. “Can’t happen soon enough for me.”

  “I hear ya. Thanks for the heads-up. See you in the morning.”

  “Later.” Waiting for the car to warm up, Freddie contemplated the phone in his hand and the conversation he’d had earlier with Sam. Yes, he loved Elin. He loved everything about her. He loved her quick wit, her astute observations, those light blue eyes that looked at him with such desire and yes, he loved the sex, which was flat-out amazing. Not that he had anything to compare it to since she’d been his first, but he had a feeling he could sleep with an army of women and never find the kind of connection he had with her.

  Then he thought of his mother and how completely she disapproved of his relationship with Elin, who she’d deemed too racy and worldly for her sainted son. She’d raised him alone, and their church had been central to their lives. When he was fifteen he’d taken a vow of celibacy that he’d stuck to for fourteen long years—until he met Elin and all vows went rushing out the window in a haze of lust. He’d been stunned to discover he was just like every other guy who let his little brain do the thinking for his big brain.

  Before the interlude with Elin, he’d liked to think he was superior to other men who lived in constant pursuit of their next bed partner. Finding out that, despite his deep Christian faith, he was no better than the next guy had been a revelation, to say the least.

  Which was why he was si
tting here in the dark wanting to call her and knowing if he did, he’d end up at her place and they’d be going at it in under five minutes. And that was bad how, exactly? His cock hardened as he thought of her soft skin, the firm, toned muscles from hours at the gym where she worked, those amazing breasts with the pierced nipples that hardened to sharp points and brushed against his chest as he thrust into her.

  Freddie groaned and pressed the speed-dial number he’d assigned to her. He hoped she wasn’t out with someone else. They’d been taking it day-by-day since she agreed to go to Sam’s wedding with him, and of course Sam had been absolutely right when she concluded that he and Elin were still mostly about sex.

  “I wondered if you would call tonight,” she said when she answered. Her voice sounded hoarse from sleep. Imagining her in bed did nothing to help the situation in his lap.

  “What’re you up to?”

  “Nothing much. How about you?”

  “Just getting out of work.”

  “Long day. You want to come over?”

  His erection surged in answer to the question, but he forced himself to ignore the lust. “We could go out,” he said, even though he had no interest in going anywhere other than her bed. “Hit a club or something.”

  “I’m tired. I don’t feel like going out.”

  “We can get together another night.”

  Her soft laughter had him starting the car and driving toward her place. “I’m not that tired.”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Not yet, but you will be soon.”

  Freddie swallowed hard. It was official—he was addicted to her, and it was time to take this relationship to the next level, with or without his mother’s approval.

  Sam was in the car on the way home when her cell phone rang. She pressed the speaker button to take the call. “Holland.”

  “Other Holland,” her father Skip said with a husky laugh. “I thought you were Cappuano now.”

  Sam smiled. “Only at home.”

  “Can you swing by on your way home? There’s a ton of mail for you here, and Celia has some questions about some of the stuff you have upstairs.”