The instant Jacob and I step out of the subway terminal and onto the sidewalk, his phone buzzes. He pulls it from his pocket and glances at me before answering. “Royce. I’ll put him on speaker.” I nod and he hits the answer button. “Jewel’s on the line,” he announces.
“Good,” Royce says. “You both need to hear this. This guy you’re going to see, Gerome Smith, is a licensed PI in California, not New York. He’s been here six months, but he hasn’t applied for a license. On a gut feeling, I made a quick call to one of my ex-co-workers at the FBI. Turns out, prior to moving here he was in LA, and the feds suspected him of aiding more than one felony cover-up. There is reason to believe he had a connection to the former DA. As in the DA wanted a case to go his way, and Gerome helped him make it happen. That DA left office, and Gerome quickly got out of dodge. Word is he’s operated on a cash-only basis, and off the books. Watch your backs. He’s a tricky little bastard. I’ll be on standby if you need me.”
“Copy that, boss,” Jacob says, disconnecting the line.
“Okay,” I say, processing what we know. “So, Rodriquez must have had an informant that he didn’t want to share with me that hooked him up with Gerome.”
“Or he has something on Gerome and decided to use it to get him to do work for him.”
He’s right. That makes sense. Maybe Rodriquez even covered up crimes for Gerome. Maybe he helped Rodriquez cover up a crime. It’s not a place I want to go, but there are dirty cops. That’s just a fact. Jacob and I fall into silence, passing a closed topless bar that is the only eyesore in a neighborhood that is residential, with high-end shops a few short blocks away, and a half-dozen Starbucks somewhere within walking distance.
A half-block past the bar, we stop at the front door of our destination building, a fifteen-story heap of old brick, with a buzzer door system, like so many of the locations in the city. Someone exits the door, and Jacob grabs it before it shuts. “Good catch,” I murmur, entering the foyer that is basically a walkway surrounded by walls. Jacob joins me and we make our way to the elevator that is one of those steel slow moving boxes.
The elevator slowly opens and we enter the car. Jacob snags Gerome’s card from his pocket, glances at it and punches the tenth floor before we stand side-by-side waiting on the dinosaur doors to shut. We don’t speak, both of us focused, ready for trouble. I’m comfortable with this silence. I’m comfortable with him right here with me, too. He doesn’t feel like an intrusion as I’d expected him to and that has nothing to do with my need for protection. I haven’t even thought of the slayer for hours until this moment. But slayer or not, I have only known Jacob a short while and yet I’m one hundred percent confident that he would take a bullet for me. On the other hand, I can’t say that about many of the badges I’ve worked with daily, which is proof that a job, duty as one might call it, doesn’t give you courage or honor. That I can count on Jacob matters to me. I think he has the potential to really matter to me.
“I’d take a bullet for you, too,” I say, without looking at him.
“What?” he asks, and I feel his attention on me now, not the doors.
I glance over at him. “I just want you to know that I know you’d take a bullet for me and it’s a mutual thing. I’ve got your back, too.”
“I don’t want you to take a bullet for me, Jewel. I protect you. You don’t protect me.”
“Sorry, Jacob. That’s just not how this works. And I don’t want you to take a bullet for me, either. But there is something about knowing that the person by your side would.”
The elevator dings and I can feel him fighting an urge to pull me close. “We’re going to talk about this conversation later,” he says, his tone hard, something unreadable in his eyes.
“Talk all you want,” I say. “Conversation won’t change who I am or what I believe.”
The doors finally open and I step forward, only to have Jacob catch my arm. “Ladies don’t go first into danger.”
“I’m a—”
“Don’t say detective,” he says. “Because that conversation, as you say, changes nothing.” He pulls me behind him.
I grimace but he’s already stepping into the hallway, blocking my path several beats, giving me space to join him, and motioning me forward.
Once I’m at his side, he points to the hallway several feet ahead, and right. We walk in that direction and, of course, he rounds the corner first before we continue on toward Smith’s office. We locate the proper room number to find the office door cracked open. Instinct has my hand going to my weapon, and Jacob does the same. We glance at each other and give a ready nod.
Both of us flatten on the wall. “Hello?” I call out, while Jacob kicks open the door and reclaims his spot out of the line of sight. “Hello?!” I call out again, easing around the doorframe just enough to get a visual that sets my heart to racing. Not only is a man that I assume to be Gerome lying on the floor in a pool of blood, Rodriquez is next to him and he’s not moving. “Rodriquez!” I shout. “Rodriquez, damn it, answer me!”
He doesn’t move and I share a look with Jacob, who motions to the door, a moment before he enters, his weapon ahead of him, scanning left and right. “Don’t touch anything,” I order, trusting him to cover me as I make a beeline for Rodriquez, and the bullet hole I spot between Gerome’s eyes does not make me hopeful. But as I squat down in a blood-free zone next to Rodriquez, hope forms with the absence of an obvious injury anywhere on his body. I press my fingers to his neck, but there is no pulse to be found. “Damn it,” I murmur, moving my fingers and trying again. “He’s dead!” I call out and then murmur again, “Damn it, he’s dead.”
“We’re clear,” Jacob calls out, while I frown at the sight of a piece of paper lying on top of Rodriquez’s legs. I scoot down in that direction to find handwriting that reads: I’m sorry, Jewel. He knew things you just weren’t ready to know. If you were, you'd have seen what I already showed you
My spine stiffens with the words “weren’t ready.”
“Jacob!” I call out, reaching in my bag for gloves.
“I’m here,” Jacob says, kneeling beside me, and the instant his gaze hits the note, he curses. “Is that the Rodriquez’s writing?”
“Yes.”
“‘Not ready’? Either Rodriquez is your slayer, or this isn’t a murder/suicide as that note suggests. It’s murder, and that’s a message to you.”
“He’s not the slayer,” I say, my gut screaming with that reply. “And the slayer is too smart to believe I’d believe that.” I rotate to face him, pulling on my gloves. “I need to hear that my father is okay. Please call Savage while I’m calling this in.” I hand him a pair of gloves. “You need to wear these.”
He takes them and grabs my hand a moment. “Your father is safe, but I’ll go call and check in with Savage. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m always okay at a crime scene. I have to be.”
He studies me a moment in which I’m certain he wants to point out that this isn’t a normal crime scene, but he doesn’t. All he says is, “I’ll be back,” before he pushes to his feet and walks toward the door.
I stand up and grab my phone, connecting to the station, scanning the few pieces of furniture in the room. A desk. A credenza. Two chairs. “This is Detective Carpenter,” I say when the line is answered. “I have a double homicide with a detective involved and dead.” I answer a series of questions, and give them the address, before standing up and dialing the Lieutenant, scanning around the bodies.
“Detective,” he says. “If this is about rotation—”
“Rodriquez is dead. I’m at the scene.”
“Holy fuck. Give me the address. I’m walking toward the exit now to come to you.”
I give him the address. “It’s Gerome Smith’s office.” And because I know his next questions before he asks them, I supply details. “I’m not sure if Gerome was an informant or what exactly. He was going to meet him and asked me to back him up.”
“And Gerome killed him,” he assumes.
“No,” I say. “He and Gerome are both dead. It looks like a murder/suicide with Rodriquez as the trigger. Without forensic input to confirm, it appears he may have shot Gerome and took some sort of toxin, which of course, will take weeks to confirm.”
He’s silent a beat. “Did he do it?” he asks gravely.
“My professional opinion is no. It’s a set-up.”
“Facts,” he orders. “Back that up. Tell me what you do know.”
I give him the rundown on Gerome and the theories I’d discussed with Jacob. “You’re telling me that Rodriquez might have been dirty?”
“I’m telling you that I want this case and that I have to use that as a working hypothesis.”
“That hypothesis,” he argues rightfully, “supports a murder/suicide.”
“I know that,” I say. “But it wasn’t.”
“Don’t make me work for this Carpenter,” he snaps. “Back it up.”
“He left a note addressed to me and while it’s his handwriting, it reads like something my stalker would write.”
“Okay. I am going to put that bombshell aside because your head is fucked by this stalker. Rodriquez called you for back up and the note was addressed to you. That sounds like he, himself, planned it.”
“With all due respect,” I bite out, “My head is not fucked up, Lieutenant.”
“Why did he call you, of all people, to back him up?” he demands.
“He told me that Gerome was ‘the guy’ to go to hide a body. He wouldn’t tell me more but as I think this through, I assume Rodriguez had something on the guy and was using him to solve cases. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Sirens sound in the near distance. “Deal with the forensic team,” he says. “Check any cameras. I’ll be there in fifteen.” He hangs up and I shove my phone inside my bag, and study the body, looking for signs of trauma that just don’t exist.
“Your father’s fine,” Jacob says, rejoining me. “And Savage is going to stay the night in his apartment with him.” He glances down at the body, tilting his head to the side, and then looking at me again. “No bullet wound?”
“No,” I say. “No obvious trauma at all. Which means—”
“Pills or poison,” he supplies. “Which one could reason, was because he was afraid to pull the trigger on himself.”
“No,” I say, rejecting that idea. “This is no murder/suicide, but it was made to look like one. And if the forensics agree, I’m going to have a hard time proving otherwise. I will, though. I will prove it and I will get him. I know this was the slayer.”
“I don’t disagree,” Jacob say, “but the first question we have to ask is, to what end game?”