Fatal Scandal: Book Eight of the Fatal Series (4 page)

He did it again, on the other side this time, before bending her at the waist and taking her hard and fast from behind. It was over almost before it began, but every inch of her body tingled with aftershocks as he washed between her legs and sent her on her way with yet another well-placed spank. “Be careful out there, babe.”

“Always am.”

“Let me know what’s going on when you can.”

“Will do. Thanks for the morning wake-up call.”

“Anytime.”

Sam kissed him and left him to finish his shower. She put on a robe to walk across the hall to get dressed, trying to ignore the agent who was positioned outside Scotty’s room as he made an equal effort to ignore her. How long would it take before she became accustomed to having people crawling all over her house?

She threw on jeans, a heavy sweater and the fleece-lined snow boots that Nick had given her for Christmas. Her wet hair would make her cold on the crime scene, so she put on a knit hat and wrapped a scarf around her neck. She went downstairs, grabbed an apple and a bottle of water before bolting past the agent at the door and stomping down the ramp, checking the time on her phone as she went.

Twelve minutes from phone call to car with shower sex. Not bad.

As she drove, she ate the apple and yawned her head off, jonesing for the diet cola she’d been forced to give up when her stomach revolted against the acid in the soda. While she wouldn’t have traded a minute of the evening she’d spent wrapped up in her gorgeous husband, she wished now that she’d spent a tiny bit more of it actually sleeping.

She parked illegally on Constitution Avenue and stepped under the yellow crime scene tape that a patrolman held up for her. “What’ve we got?” she asked Officer Beckett, who stood next to the car.

“Female vic, approximately thirty years old. Waiting for Dispatch to get me the details on the car.”

“Have you touched anything?”

“I gloved up to open the car door and check for a pulse. I also checked the glove box for a registration, but it wasn’t in there. That’s as far as I went on my own.”

“Good job.”

She pulled latex gloves from her coat pocket and snapped them on before leaning into the car for a closer look. The woman had long brown hair and pale skin. Sam noted bruising around her neck and throat, indication that she’d been manually strangled. She reached across the front seat for the purse that sat on the passenger seat and went through it looking for a wallet, which was at the bottom.

Sam pulled it out and stood upright, relying on the first light of day to get a read of the name and address on the Maryland license. Lori Phillips. A bolt of shock traveled through Sam, drawing a gasp from her tightly clenched lips as she took a second look at the woman and recognized her as the mother of Gonzo’s son—the same woman he’d faced off against in court, the same one he’d said he wanted to strangle.

“Fuck,” Sam whispered.

“What’s got you swearing before the sun is even up?” her partner, Detective Freddie Cruz, asked as he joined her.

Sam turned to him, not surprised to see him bed-headed and rumpled as he always was when he responded to calls late at night or first thing in the morning. “It’s Lori Phillips.”

Freddie’s mouth opened and then closed. “As in
Gonzo’s
Lori Phillips?” he asked in nearly a whisper.

“One and the same.”

“Shit.”

“Thus the swearing.” Sam didn’t tell him—and wouldn’t tell anyone—what Gonzo had said to her the night before. But she’d be having a conversation with her detective sergeant the second she could break free from the crime scene.

Freddie zipped his coat all the way to the top. A whipping wind made it that much colder than it already was. “How do we play this?”

“I don’t know. I just got here myself. I need a minute to think.” Sam took Lori’s phone out of her purse and handed it to Freddie. “How do we see what’s on this?”

Freddie took it from her and pushed some buttons. “It’s password protected. We’ll need to get it to Archie for a dump.” He glanced at something over her shoulder. “Here comes the ME.” Then he looked down at her, concern etched into his handsome face. “You don’t think—”

“No! I don’t think that. And neither do you.”

“Right. Of course I don’t think that.” After a long pause, he said, “But everyone else will.”

“Shit, fuck, damn, hell,” she muttered, staring down at Lori and thinking of the shitstorm that would erupt when the media caught wind of the fact that she’d been murdered. In any homicide investigation, Sam’s first thoughts were always for her victim and getting justice for both the victim and the victim’s family. In this case, however, she couldn’t help but think of her close friend and how this particular homicide would turn his life upside down.

“What you said.” As a rule, Freddie left the swearing to her, but even he was known to break loose in the most extreme situations, and this certainly counted as extreme. “What’s the plan?”

“Work the scene and keep a lid on our vic’s identity until I can get my head around this. Don’t tell anyone her name. See about getting video surveillance footage from around here. Surely we have cameras in the area. And the minute you can, get that phone to Archie at HQ.” Sam dropped Lori’s wallet into her coat pocket. “Beckett!”

The patrolman came over to them. “Yes, ma’am?”

“You hear back from Dispatch on the car?”

“Just now.” He handed her a slip of paper on which he’d written, George Phillips with an address in Bowie, Maryland.

“Thanks. I’m putting a gag order on every detail of this investigation. Got me?”

“Yes, ma’am. No one will hear anything from me.”

“Good. Where’s Crime Scene?” she asked of the detectives who would go through the vehicle with a fine-tooth comb.

“On their way.”

“Thanks, Beckett.” After she and Freddie did a visual search of the car and found nothing obvious to aid in the investigation, Sam waved for Lindsey McNamara, the District’s chief medical examiner, to come forward. “All yours, Doc.”

“Do we know who she is?”

“We do.”

Lindsey secured her long red hair into a ponytail. “And?”

“For right now she’s a thirty-one-year-old Jane Doe. Got me?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll brief you as soon as I can.” To Freddie, she said, “Keep an eye on things, get Patrol to begin a canvas of the area and keep me posted on anything that transpires. As soon as you can, get the phone to HQ.”

“Got it. Where are you going?”

“To Gonzo’s.”

“Sam. You gotta know, he would never...”

“We’d both like to think that, Freddie, but honestly, you never know what someone will do when they feel desperate and pushed to the brink.”

Freddie blanched. “You said you weren’t thinking that.”

“I gotta go. Keep the scene under control.”

“I will.”

As Sam took off toward her car, she ducked under the yellow tape and felt sick to her stomach. No, she didn’t actually think her close friend and colleague was capable of murder. However, Gonzo had been under a tremendous amount of stress as he recovered from the gunshot wound and also dealt with the media circus over his connection to the judge.

And now Lori was dead, and everyone would be looking to him. The first thing they did in any homicide investigation was investigate motive. And who had the greatest motivation to get Lori out of the picture?

Detective Sergeant Thomas Gonzales.

Chapter Four

Riddled with anxiety, Sam drove across the city to the apartment Gonzo shared with Christina and Alex. She’d give just about anything not to have to do what she was about to do. His words from the night before echoed through her mind, making her wonder if someone she thought she knew as well as anyone was capable—

“No,” she said out loud. “Don’t even think it. He’s not capable.” But she couldn’t get past the awful stress Gonzo had been under since he’d been shot shortly after being given full custody of Alex. Sam couldn’t forget the way Lori had appeared at the hospital while they waited to hear if Gonzo would survive and demanded they turn over Alex to her while he was incapacitated.

Sam had wanted to kill the woman herself that day. She could only imagine how Gonzo had felt when he learned that Lori’s lawyers had dug into his life and uncovered the connection between him and Judge Morton. One of them should’ve disclosed it, but neither had and now...

“Now she’s dead, and the media will go crazy pointing the finger at him.” She pounded her hand on the steering wheel. “Fuck, fuck,
fuck
!” Her phone rang, interrupting her plan to do more swearing. “Holland.”

“Please hold for Chief Farnsworth.” The phone clicked and he came on the line. “Holland?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sorry to bother you on a holiday.”

“I’ve already been bothered by Dispatch.”

“What’ve you got?”

Sam swallowed hard. She should tell him. She absolutely should tell him. But she couldn’t—not before she had a chance to talk to Gonzo. “Female vic strangled. Found in a car on Constitution by West Potomac Park. Early stages.”

“Keep me posted,” he said with less interest than he’d normally give a homicide. Nothing about what was going on with him right now was normal.

“I will.”

“I’m calling a commander’s meeting at noon. I’d like you there.”

“Of course.”

“Again, I apologize for interrupting the holiday. It’s just... Well, I need...” He cleared his throat. “I’ll see you at noon?”

Sam hated the uncertainty she heard in his usually assertive voice. More than that, she hated the pang of fear that struck in the vicinity of her heart when she realized he sounded scared. Her uncle Joe—her chief—never sounded scared. “I’ll be there.”

“Thank you. See you then.”

Sam stowed the phone in her coat pocket as she pulled up to the curb outside Gonzo’s building. She thought of the last time she’d been here, for a Christmas get-together Christina had put together to bolster Gonzo’s flagging spirits.

His recovery was taking longer than he would’ve liked, and he’d been chafing to get back to work. The time with his squad and other friends had done him good, and she’d left the party feeling hopeful that he’d be back where he belonged before too much longer.

Now this.

Sam got out of the car and trudged up the two flights of stairs to Gonzo’s apartment where she knocked on the door. Since he often mentioned Alex’s early wake-ups, she was confident they’d be up.

He came to the door with the baby in his arms. The smiling dark-haired boy was a mirror image of his father, right down to the dimple in his adorable little chin. “Hey,” Gonzo said, clearly surprised to find her on his doorstep. “What’re you doing out so early on a holiday?”

“Can I come in for a sec?”

His brows narrowed with questions he didn’t ask. “Sure.” He stepped aside to let her in and put Alex down. The baby toddled off to the corner of the living room where his toys were kept. “What’s up, Sam?”

Sam forced herself to look at him, to make eye contact. “Is Christina here?”

“She’s in the shower.”

Sam’s stomach ached the way it used to when she’d been strung out on diet cola. She rubbed a hand over it, trying to figure out how she should play this as she tried not to notice the still raw-looking wound on his neck. “So, um, after we talked last night, did you go anywhere?”

“No. I was here all night. I did what you said and tried to stay focused on Chris and our anniversary. We had a good night, all things considered. Why?”

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

He tipped his head quizzically. “
Lie
to you? No, I wouldn’t lie to you. Why would you ask me such a thing?”

Sam sighed. “Lori was found murdered this morning in a parked car downtown. She’d been manually strangled.”

All the color seemed to leach from his face as he processed what she’d said. “And you thought, because of what I said last night...”

“No, I didn’t really think that. I didn’t
want
to think it.”

“Sam, come on! This is
me
. You can’t possibly think that I’d actually
harm
her. Sure, I wanted her to go away and leave us alone, but not like this. Never like this.” He glanced over to where his little boy was playing with trucks. “She’s his
mother
, Sam,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t. I
couldn’t
. Even if I said I wanted to. You have to believe me.”

“I do. I believe you, and I believe in you. But you have to know, this is going to blow up big-time, and all eyes will be on you until we figure out what happened.”

He ran both hands through his hair as the impact of what she’d said seemed to settle in on him. “This is a fucking nightmare. This whole thing, from the second she first called to tell me... Except for him. He’s the blessing in all of it, but what if he thinks, someday... That I could’ve...”

“Gonzo.” Sam rested her hand on his arm and squeezed. “Take a breath.”

He did as she directed and then glanced at her, seeming devastated. “She’s really dead? You saw her with your own eyes?”

“I did and she is.”

“Who else knows it’s her?”

“Right now only Cruz, but I won’t be able to sit on this for long. Farnsworth already knows we’ve caught a new case. He’s going to have questions.”

“Goddamn. I don’t even know what to do. What should I do?”

“Hey, Sam.” Christina came into the room wearing yoga pants and a tank top. Her shoulder-length blond hair was still damp from the shower. “You’re out early.”

“Baby.” Gonzo held out his hand to her, and she grasped it, letting him draw her into his embrace.

“What wrong, Tommy? You’re scaring me.”

“It’s Lori,” he said softly. “Someone killed her.”

“
What?
When?”

“We got the call early this morning,” Sam said.

“Oh my God.” And then her face went slack with horror and understanding. “You aren’t here because you think he had something to do with it, are you? Because he didn’t! He was right here with us all night! I’ll make a statement. What do I have to do?”

Gonzo rubbed his hand over her back. “Calm down, honey.”

No doubt sensing their dismay, Alex toddled over to them and tugged on Christina’s pants. She bent to pick him up, wiping tears from her face as she did. “He had nothing to do with this, Sam. You know that as well as I do.”

“Mama,” Alex said, tearing up.

Christina held him close, encouraging him to snuggle into her embrace.

Watching Christina with the baby gave Sam a pang of longing. She’d been trying to have a baby for most of her adult life with no luck, and when Alex had dropped into Gonzo’s life out of the blue she’d been filled with unreasonable jealousy.

“Can we make a statement?” Christina switched into professional mode as the initial shock passed. “If we come out ahead of the story, then they can’t drag us through the mud.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Sam said. “Here’s the bottom line—you both have motive, and you’re each other’s alibi.”

“How can you say that?” Christina asked angrily. “You’re our
friend
. You know us! You can’t honestly think we’d be capable of
killing
someone.”

“Babe.” The calm tone of Gonzo’s voice belied the panic Sam still saw in his eyes as well as the grim set of his mouth. “Sam’s right. She’s playing devil’s advocate. It doesn’t matter what we know to be true. What matters is what everyone else will believe and say.”

“There has to be something we can do. We never left this apartment from the time we got home from the grocery store yesterday afternoon.”

“Does the building have security cameras?” Sam asked.

“I think it does,” Gonzo said, brightening.

“I’ll get a warrant.” Sam pulled her phone from her pocket and placed a call to Captain Malone, her mentor and boss.

“Happy New Year,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I need a warrant,” Sam said without preamble.

“For?”

“The apartment building where Detective Sergeant Gonzales and his fiancée live with his son.” Sam gave him the address. “I need the security footage.”

“Um, do you mind if I ask
why
?”

“The mother of his son was found murdered this morning. We’re seeking to prove that neither he nor his fiancée left the house from the time they arrived home yesterday afternoon to the present time.”

“Holy Christ,” Malone said in barely more than a whisper.

“Warrant? Yes?”

“Yeah, I’m on it. I’ll be back to you ASAP.”

“Thanks. We haven’t told anyone who our vic is yet. I’d appreciate you keeping the lid on it until we figure out a plan.”

“Done. Will you be at the noon meeting?”

“I’ll be there.”

“See you then.”

“What did he say?” Gonzo asked the second Sam ended the call.

“He’s getting the warrant. Does the building have a super or a manager?”

Gonzo nodded. “He’s on the first floor. A guy named Tony. I can’t remember his last name.”

“He’s in 1A,” Christina added.

“I’m going down to talk to him,” Sam said. “Sit tight and try not to worry. If you didn’t do anything, you have nothing to worry about.”

“
If?
” Christina asked, incredulous. “You really don’t believe us when we say we had nothing to do with this, do you?”

“I do believe you. But I need to prove that as fast as I possibly can so no one has a chance to ruin your lives with innuendo.”

“Go ahead, Sam,” Gonzo said, sounding resigned. “We’ll stay here.”

“Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t take any calls. Don’t make any. Got me?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I got you.”

She certainly didn’t have to tell him how important the next few hours would be to maintaining control of this situation. She went down the stairs to find the super, stopping short at the sight of several men working on something inside the main door. “Is one of you Tony?”

“That’d be me,” a tall, muscular black man said. “What can I do for you?”

Sam flashed her badge. “Lieutenant Holland, Metro PD.”

“Ahhh, the VP’s wife,” Tony said, smiling. “We got a celebrity in our midst, fellas.”

The men with him stopped what they were doing to take a good long look at her, which made her skin crawl. She hated when people brought up her personal life when she was on the job. Why did everyone have to make such a BFD out of who she was married to? What did it matter?

“Right now I’m a cop, and I have questions,” she said brusquely.

“What can I do for you?”

“The building has security cameras?”

He gestured to the other men. “It does. They’re fixing them as we speak. Why?”

Sam’s stomach sank at that news. “How long have they been broken?”

“Since about noon yesterday. I noticed it this morning. That one there?” He pointed to the camera that monitored the vestibule. “It was hanging from its wires when I came home from my girl’s place. I called these guys in and paid extra since it’s a holiday. We take security seriously around here.” He paused, glancing up the stairs. “One of your guys lives here.”

“That’s right.” If she could get a look at who disabled the system, it might help. “I’ve requested a warrant for the security footage.”

“How come?” he asked, suspicious now.

“It’s part of an ongoing investigation. I’m not at liberty to discuss the details. Am I going to have to wait for the warrant to receive your cooperation or can you help me?”

“I’m not really sure I’m allowed to just hand over the video. I’d need to check with my boss.”

“Can you do that now?”

“Sure.” He stepped into his apartment and closed the door behind him.

“What happened to the cameras?” Sam asked the workers.

“Someone unscrewed it from its anchor and left it to dangle,” one of them said. “The only footage you’re gonna get is of the floor.”

And of course they’d had their hands all over it as they fixed it, wiping away any prints that might’ve been left behind. Sam felt increasingly queasy as the implications set in. Without the camera, they’d have no way to prove that Gonzo and Christina never left the building last night.

Sam’s phone rang and she took the call from Freddie while she waited for Tony to return. “What’s up?”

“Lindsey is about to transport the vic to the morgue. Crime Scene is here, and they’re looking for the okay to take the car back to the lab.”

Stepping out of earshot of the workers, Sam said, “Let them take it. We need a thread to pull. I’ll take whatever I can get.”

“You talked to him?”

Sam appreciated that he didn’t name names. “Yeah, he’s shaken but adamant. Neither of them left the apartment from the time they got home from the grocery store yesterday afternoon.”

“Good,” Freddie said with an audible sigh of relief. “That’s really good.”

“Except we can’t prove it.” She told him about the disabled camera in the building’s vestibule.

“Oh, crap. So what now?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m waiting to hear if the super is going to be able to get me the video they do have. If we can get an image of someone disabling the camera, that would at least give us something to go on. Malone is getting a warrant, but I’ve asked the super to cooperate. He’s calling the building owner.”

“Sam...”

“I know. Believe me. I know.”

“What can I do?”

“Rip her life apart. Find me someone else who had motive, and do it as fast as you can. I want the whole squad on this one. Call everyone in, tell them the order is from me.”

“Okay.” His relief at having something to do was conveyed with the single word. Gonzo was one of his closest friends, as well as his colleague, and he’d want to do anything he could to help him.