Chapter 1

Tony

 

“Homicide.”

“Yeah, Tony, got a couple of fresh ones at two-two-one-six, east 53rd; apartment two-oh-six. You’re up.”

I finished scribbling the address he’d given me on a legal pad in front of me saying, “I think this damn city has had enough with the baseball references, Captain.”

“Yeah, whatever, get your ass over there, this city has had enough with the homicides lately, too.”

“You ain’t lying; I’m on it.”

I tossed the receiver back onto its cradle with a clatter. I sat up from where I’d been hunched over my desk and rubbed the back of my neck, giving myself at least enough time to indulge in a stretch before getting up. I picked up the pad of paper, my eyes roving over the address as it tickled the back of my brain.

I knew it, but couldn’t place it. Something about all those twos and sixes was just niggling at me in the worst way but I figured I’d see it soon enough. I needed to get over there before the bodies got cold. Before the medical examiner got any kind of time with them. It helped to see the scene before anything was touched or moved.

I got up and hauled ass, heading down to the garage and my assigned cruiser. It was a short drive from the 12th precinct to the apartment’s address and there was plenty of parking in among the black and whites with their party lights that were already there. Hell, the coroner’s van wasn’t even here yet. Just a couple of uniformed units. Lucky me. I double parked and then it clicked… this was Chrissy’s place. She was a lawyer, a defense attorney that I’d taken out a couple of times. We were like ships passing in the night schedule wise, and after the fourth interrupted date, we had pretty much come to the conclusion that it was nice, but it wasn’t going to happen.

That’d been over three years ago, pushing four; I’d always sort of wondered if our paths would cross again. I never imagined it might be on a homicide call in her building, that is, if she still even lived here. Who was I kidding? I knew, deep in my gut from the minute I’d pulled up it was the feisty lawyer’s apartment I was headed to.

“Well you can definitely say there were signs of forced entry, huh detective?” a uniform, Johns by the nametag on his chest, said as I stepped carefully over the shattered debris that’d been Chrissy Franco’s doorframe and lock.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered taking in the raw scene.

There was a blonde, draped back over the arm of the couch, a movie-perfect shot through her fuckin’ forehead, right between the eyes. I walked carefully up to the second body and leaned down over my knees.

“Yeah, that’s Chrissy Franco, alright,” I said, heart heavy in the center of my chest. Regret weighed me down like a thousand pound boulder in the center of my chest. She was beautiful, even like this, body cooling on the floor. If ever there had been one that’d got away, it was Chrissy. I’d thought about her a lot in the intervening years since I’d last seen her. I’d even caught myself lingering in the corridors of the courthouse on the occasions I’d had to be there. Hoping to run into her, hoping to rekindle things; that she might happen to be single, maybe willing to give it a shot again… This was a-fucking-shame, and I was gutted that it had to be me to catch the call.

Damnit.

I pulled on a pair of gloves and went to trace some of her long dark hair away from the side of her face so I could get a better look at her when she gasped.

I nearly shot through the fuckin’ roof.

“Call a bus!” I screamed and knelt down amid the broken glass and spilled wine, the sweet smell of alcohol and coppery tang of blood singeing my nose even as hope filled me up like a helium goddamn balloon.

“H-he-help me,” she stammered out and I took her hand.

“Ambulance is on the way, just hang on, baby.”

“Tony?”

“Yeah, yeah, you remember me?”

“It hurts!” her tone was mournful, pain filled, and I deflated a little on the inside, but I wasn’t willing to show it. Confidence, surety, that’s what she needed right now.

Shit. Both of those things were the last things I was feeling right now. I wasn’t used to live victims, especially not ones I’d had the occasional date with. I couldn’t fucking help her except to wait for paramedics and I hated it. I glared at the uniform who was spewing panicked words into the mic at his shoulder.

“Didn’t you check to see if she was a-fuckin’-live!?” I demanded, needing to direct my helpless anger somewhere.

“I mean, who gives a shit, man? I didn’t know! Just look at her!” he shouted and I swore I was gonna have a quiet conversation with him and his CO later, whether or not she lived or died. That shit wasn’t right. You didn’t get to pick the vic. I strapped down my incendiary rage at the comment and stroked her hand, giving my attention to the wounded woman on the floor, the person that needed it most.

“Hang on, Chrissy, we’re gonna get you some help.” She squeezed my hand and I could swear my heart squeezed down with it, a tight ball of sympathy for her pain.

Nobody deserved this shit. To have someone break down your door; shoot you up, and for what? I thought about it. About the uproar over the Maguire case, it was the likeliest conclusion based on what I knew so far… Because you did your job?

“Just hang on for me, baby. Stay with me…”

Rattled didn’t even begin to cover how I felt about this one.

 

***

 

I stayed on the scene despite how much I wanted to follow the living victim in this case. I couldn’t do anything for her, it was all up to the EMT’s, doctors, nurses, and probably surgeons - if she made it that far. What I could do was work the scene and speak for the blonde on the couch who didn’t have a voice anymore.

I went through the motions, but everything here was just so damn personal like it’d never been on a scene before. My mind going over the little details.

She liked soothing, neutral colors, her walls a misty blue-grey, it was amazing that she’d found an apartment that’d let her paint the walls. That, or she threw caution to the wind and didn’t give a fuck about getting her deposit back. I smiled to myself; that sounded like the Chrissy Franco I’d known. Knew, I admonished myself. She’s not dead, not yet… Fuck. I shook my head, dropping my chin to my chest and pulling on the back of my head in an attempt to ease the tension there.

“Got an ID?” I looked up and over at my partner and sighed.

“What took you so fucking long?” I asked.

“Cipriani case is going to court next week, it’s all hands on deck at the DA’s for witness prep.”

“They act like you’ve never testified before,” I said and sighed.

My partner, James McDonnell, was another Mick like me, only seventeen years my senior. Still a while from retirement, being only in his fifties, the world hung on him, weighing down his shoulders like the tired old raincoat that he had on over his equally tired suit.

He waved me off and looked over at where the medical examiner was doing her thing. He shook his head and asked, “Who’s our vic?”

“Wrong question, what you should be asking is who’re our vic’s, plural.” I stepped aside so he could see the blood, wine, and broken glass from where Chrissy had lain.

He grunted and said, “Alright, Youngblood, get me up to speed already.”

“The blonde is Samantha Lynn Hayworth but the apartment belongs to our other vic, Christina Marie Franco.”

“Aw Christ, the one that got Skip Maguire’s ol’ lady off the hook?”

“Yeah, that would be the one,” I said heavily.

“So what do we know?”

“Not a lot yet. When I got here, there were obvious signs of forced entry.” I pointed with my pen at the shattered doorframe, my tone ironic even though he probably wouldn’t get the joke – the uniform did, barking a laugh.

Jaime eyed him and said to me, “No shit, Sherlock?”

“And Ms. Franco was laying here on the floor unconscious.” I finished, not missing a beat.

“Wait, you got all the way here and no one checked to see if she was alive or not?”

“And I quote from our boy over there, ‘who gives a shit?’”

Jaime reeled back, same as I’d done and said, “Really now?” he asked, the uniform finally cluing in and blanching. “That’s some bullshit, son. What’s your name?”

“Uh… Officer Johns, sir.”

“Well, Officer Johns, from the,” he squinted at the officer’s collar pins, “11th… you go on and wait out front. Youngblood here and I will be having a quiet talk with you and your CO later.”

The kid, who barely looked like he was out of being a rookie, turned red and nodded, ducking out the fucked up front door under Jaime’s stern gaze until he was out of sight.

I chuckled and it was a dark one. No one gave good pissed off cop face better than my partner. It was never our favorite thing having a chat with another cop’s CO about things. ICPD already had a bad rap with the public when it came to corruption and a whole host of other bullshit. The new community slogan that the Mayor’s office was trying to impress upon everybody was “be the change that you want to see.”

Not only in an effort to weed out the corruption, but also to get aspiring new recruits into the uniform. There were a whole lot more cops than not on the verge of retirement with all the baby boomers hitting their sixties. In any case, it was better that we have a quiet chat with him and his CO than it was to write him up and jam him up with IAD. No one liked to be a rat, but there was a difference between a quiet but stern talk; keeping it in-house, versus official complaints with the Rat Squad.

“You’ve got that look, Youngblood.” Jaime said and I shook myself out of my funk.

“Yeah, what look?” I demanded.

“The one that says something about this case has got yah, and that you’re gonna solve it come hell or high water.”

“Ah, yeah,” I nodded once.

“Mind letting me in on what’s chapping your ass?”

“Later, right now we have a building to canvas.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic, arrived just in time, did I?”

“Ah, yeah.”

“Perfect.” He sounded like it was anything but and I smirked. CSU had things here and I figured I’d pretty much absorbed everything I was going to out of seeing it firsthand.

“Let us know when you have anything, Linda,” Jaime called and the medical examiner raised her hand and waved us off.

We canvased the entire building, but aside from the little old lady that lived above Chrissy who’d called it in, nobody was talking or wanted to ‘fess up to seeing anything. It was a dead end from the start and looking pretty grim. The only shot we really had at figuring this one out was if Chrissy managed to pull through, but she’d been in a pretty bad way.

“What now?” Jaime asked and I shook my head.

“She’s gonna be in surgery for a long damn time. Might as well get started on the paperwork.”

“Always with the paperwork,” he grumbled.

“I like to have my bases covered.”

“And that fancy law degree, too.”

“Admit it, you like it,” I said and he barked a laugh.

“When it’s not being a pain in my ass.”

“Dude, get in the car.”

“Brought my own, remember? You sure you ain’t too close to this?”

I gave him a hard look and said deflected saying in a tone that brooked no argument, “See you back at the shop.”

We went back to the precinct where I called over to Trinity General Hospital first and got some nurse who, it might as well have been their first fuckin’ day.

“Yeah, this is Detective Anthony McCormick out of the 12th precinct calling about one of your patients, Christina Marie Franco. She was brought in with a couple of gunshot wounds earlier tonight.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t give out that information,” she said dubiously.

“What do you mean? Did she pass?”

“I can’t give you that information, sir. I can’t even confirm or deny if a Ms. Franco is a patient here?” I scowled at the phone and Jaime started laughing across from me.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded.

“HIPAA dictates –“

“Woah, now I’m gonna stop you right there. HIPAA dictates that you’re allowed to disclose patient information without said patient’s consent to an officer of the law, such as myself, under extenuating circumstances, sweetheart. One of those circumstances is when I need to know, like I do now, what her status is in order to catch the bad guy that did what she’s in the hospital for in the first place.”

“I’ll have to check with my supervisor…”

“Yes! Do that, put your supervisor on the line so I can see if my witness is alive and you can stop wasting my time.” I was getting irritated.

“You don’t have to take that tone with me!”

“Either you put your supervisor on the phone yesterday or I’m coming down there and putting you in cuffs for impeding an active investigation.”

Silence for several heartbeats after an indignant sound that sounded a whole lot like obstruction. Jaime leaned back in his desk chair and raised his eyebrows at me while Nurse Jr.’s voice became muffled. An older more mature woman’s voice came on the line, one I recognized.

“Merlyn, is that you?” I asked.

“Detective!” She cried, delighted.

“Yeah, I need to know about the status of a patient, can you help me out?”

“Of course, honey, what’s the name?”

“Christina Marie Franco, gunshot wounds to the back.”

I heard Merlyn’s long nails click against a keyboard, before she made some investigative noises with her breath. Finally, she came back on the line and said strong, “Oh, Honey, she’s still in surgery and will be for a while yet. That poor baby is in real bad shape.”

“I know, I was there,” I said and leaned back heavily in my own chair. “Any telling when she might be out?”

“Mm-mm, baby. No tellin’.”

“Okay, I’ll stay here and finish up what I’m doin’ then. Can you call me if there’s any change? Better yet, have Nurse Jr. do it.”

Merlyn laughed, a deep belly laugh over the phone and said, “Nurse Jr., I like that. Sure thing, baby. What number are you good at?”

I gave her my cell and added as an afterthought, “Tell Nurse Jr. she better not ever try to impede an investigation again or I’ll have her up on charges.”

“Mm, Tony. You ain’t letting that detective squad change you, now are you?”

I scrubbed my face with my hands, “No, mama, I ain’t,” I told her, but Merlyn, she knew. She reached out over the line with that sense of hers, the one that made her such a good nurse.

“Then what’s the matter?”

I picked up the phone off the cradle and sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose and turned away from Jaime, not like it would make a damn bit of difference.

“I know the vic, Merlyn. It’s a little different this time.”

“Oh, baby! I’m so sorry. If anything changes, I’ll call you myself.”

“Thanks, mama.”

“You bet, I never will forget what you did for my Ernesto.”

“Mama, we’re even on that in spades,” I told her with a chuckle.

“Now I know I ain’t heard that right!” She declared. “We will never be even, you saved that boy’s life.”

“Just did my job.”

“Mm-hm,” she didn’t sound like she believed me.

I laughed and said, “I’ve gotta go.”

“I’ll call you.”

We hung up and I turned back around and Jaime eyed me seriously. “Rut-roh,” I said, mockingly, aping the old Scooby-Doo commercials.

“You know the vic, Youngblood?”

“It ain’t like that,” I said. “Back when I first made detective, we went on a couple of dates but the careers, they just didn’t jive. Never even made it past first base.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Seriously.”

“Right.”

I gave him a flat look and he cocked his head to the side, “Fine, I’ll drop it for now but I don’t like what happened to those girls any more than you do. I want to find this animal and get him off the street before he gets any other bright ideas.”

“What makes you think it was a ‘he?’” I asked, and I was being a smartass.

“Yeah, like I need to rattle off crime statistics to you, do your fuckin’ paperwork, jackass.”

I laughed a little, glad he wasn’t making a big thing about me knowing Chrissy, at least not yet. The investigation was still young, and if he didn’t think I could remain objective, or hack it, he wouldn’t hesitate to call me on my bullshit.

We spent the better part of the next four hours dotting all of our I’s and crossing all our T’s and making it so our reports would hold up in court later and the like. Finally, Jaime leaned back in his seat and let out a satisfied ‘Ah!’

“What?” I demanded, fingers still flying across the keys.

“Quittin’ time, Youngblood.” I looked up at the clock, sure as shit, our time in the cubicle farm was up. I saved what I was doing and switched off the monitor before I got up, stretching.

“They’re still serving over at Ten-Thirteen,” he said and I chuckled but shook my head.

“Not tonight, man.”

“No?”

“Naw, I’m going to head over to the hospital. I want to be there when she gets out of surgery, see if I can get anything to go on, because right now, we don’t have squat.”

“You sure that’s the only reason you’re going?”

I made a mock-disgusted noise, “Yes, dad.”

He put up his hands in surrender and said, “I can think of a hell of a lot more comfortable places to sleep than a hospital chair, but that’s all you.”

“Night, partner,” I called to his lumbering back as he moved toward the squad room’s exit.

“Night, Youngblood!” he called back.

I took my happy ass to the locker room to change and gear up. I didn’t do combination locks, I used a burly ass padlock on my locker and I never not once locked my damn keys inside. I pulled the ring out of my hip pocket and stuck the key in the lock giving it a twist and popping it free. I opened up the sheet metal door to reveal my jacket and cut, motorcycle boots, and chaps.

I pulled my helmet off the top shelf and set it aside and pulled out the rest of my gear. I swapped shoes and instantly felt better about life, that familiar giddy energy that never got old starting up as I pulled on the chaps and snapped, buckled, and zipped everything into place. I stared down at my colors and sighed at the name flash on the front, ‘Youngblood’ picked out in indigo thread against a dirty white patch backing.

I belonged to the Indigo Knights, a cop MC that’d been around going on fifty years, although it wasn’t just specifically for cops anymore. We met and did charity shit out of The Cormorant Bar & Grill on Muller Street down in Old Town. It was what Jaime had called the Ten-Thirteen, which was a double play on words. One-zero-one-three was The Cormorant’s address, but it was also 10-13 which was the radio code for ‘officer in need of assistance.’

The Cormorant provided assistance to officers in a lot of ways, especially those of us who belonged to the Indigo Knights. It gave us a place to relax and unwind around guys like us. Not just cops, but other first responders, too. Some of the boys in fire hung there, as well as prosecutors and corrections. We even had some of the medics that we worked with on the regular come through. The Ten-Thirteen wasn’t officially a ‘cops only’ bar. Civilians found their way in from time to time. The food and booze was pretty top-notch, the place run by a retired cop and his best friend, a retired fire guy.

Nobody knew their way around a bottle like a cop, unfortunately, the same was true for Skids, one half owner of the Ten-Thirteen. It was ironic as fuck having an alcoholic and dry dude as a bartender.

Reflash was his best friend; all the recipes that’d come from the firehouse made the Ten-Thirteen’s kitchen what it was and had earned them both some pretty high accolades in a couple of fancy fuckin’ food magazines. It was great for business, but every time one of the articles came out, the place filled up with yuppies, which made it a little uncomfortable for us blue collar boys for a bit until it blew over.

I’d found my way into the Indigo Knights by way of one of the fire guys some years back. Flashover had been a good friend, we’d practically grown up together – three houses down from each other. After I’d finished up with being a rookie, he’d ended up passing muster and had joined up with Indigo City’s Fire Department. I’d always been ahead of him academically, and so there’d always been a gap between us measured by our successes and gains, but it’d never interfered with our friendship.

We’d lost Flashover a little over a year and a half ago to a warehouse fire down at the docks. It hadn’t been my case, but it’d been ruled an accidental homicide. The owner of the warehouse had gotten in deep with the Cipriani crime family and had lit the place up for the insurance money. Indigo City had lost three good firefighters in that blaze, a fourth had been severely burned and forced into retirement. I’d felt Flashover’s loss keenly just about every day since, but he’d given me one hell of a thing by convincing me to join up with the Knights.

I picked up my jacket and cut and swung them on. When it came to wearing our colors that had been a huge fight between the department and the union. For once, the union had actually done us a solid and had won us the right to wear our colors in and out of work. The higher ups had demanded a certain, and I’m quoting here, ‘high level of standard’ from its officers and had wanted to ban our ability to wear certain things to and from work. The union had argued on our behalf that unless the department wanted to pay us from the time we got dressed in the morning to the time we took our clothes off at home on our working days then they’d best let it go. The union had pushed it to the max and finally the department had relented, but it’d been an ugly win.

Now any of us who rode with the club had to mind our p’s and q’s to a fuckin’ t. It was a whole goddamn alphabet soup of good behavior. It’s one of the reasons Jaime was on my ass about the Franco thing. I traded out my guns, leaving my service weapon in the designated holster for it built into every locker, retrieving my personal one. I tucked it into the hard holster riding on my belt, up under my jacket and cut. It was the same make and model, Glock 19. Dependable, reliable, and a straight shooter.

I shut my locker door with a metallic clang and retrieved my keys and the lock. I made sure everything was tight, adjusted my firearm one more time, scooped up my brain bucket and headed for the elevator to the garage.

“Oh Captain, my Captain,” I greeted the man in charge. He was a beanpole of a man, balding pate shiny in the overhead lights, nose straight and sharp, brown eyes nondescript.

“You outta here?” he asked, stirring his coffee.

“Headed to the hospital, see if our surviving vic can give us anything to go on.”

“She out of surgery?” he asked, taking a swallow of his coffee and grunting.

“Not yet, but I was there, looked bad. If she comes out of it, might only get a brief chance, gotta do my due diligence on this one because this? This was beyond the fuckin’ pale.”

“I read the report, doesn’t look like you have shit to go on.”

“Yeah, if she dies, this one might not get solved unless CSU pulls a Hail Mary out of the air.”

The elevator dinged and the doors worked their way open.

“Not a thing from any of the neighbors?”

“Zip.”

“Well, the investigation is still young.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself, boss.”

The doors to the elevator tried to close on me and I stuck my helmet in the way. The doors halted, jarring violently and shuddering before opening back up.

“Shit, this fuckin’ thing,” my boss griped. “I’m going up, looks like you’re its favorite.” Sure enough, the elevator was going down, even though the boss is the one who’d called it. I got on and realized it was because someone had punched the wrong button. Lucky me.

“See you tomorrow, Cap.”

“Tomorrow, McCormick.” He raised his paper cup in salute and I gave him a chin lift as the doors slid shut. I hit the button for the garage and after one more stop on the next floor down I was underway to the garage.

The ride over to Trinity Gen was a meditative one. There was no telling when she would be out of surgery, but I knew enough about her to know that she didn’t have a whole lot of people; at least she didn’t three years ago. I also knew the blonde, Samantha Lynn must be her bestie who she’d always called Sami or Sami-Lynn. So, with that being said, I figured it’d be good for her to have at least one person she sort of knew versus nobody that she didn’t when she came to. I felt bad I couldn’t guarantee that I would be there when she finally woke up but I could do my best. I’d just have to see how it went.