Law of Attraction (44 page)

“And you’ve been carrying it around ever since?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to return it. It’s been sitting in my night stand. That’s why I was late. Your friend Grace tipped me off. I ran home and got it.”

“Grace! I swore her to secrecy.”

“It was all in pursuit of a worthy cause.”

He twined his fingers with hers and held up her hand so they could look at the ring on her finger. It sparkled even in candlelight.

“How are we going to tell the office?” Anna asked. They’d kept their relationship a secret until now.

“Forget the office,” Jack laughed. “How are we going to tell Olivia?”

His sassy six-year-old daughter was either going to be Anna’s biggest fan or her severest critic. But Anna put aside her worries about office politics and family drama. She stepped back into Jack’s embrace. She just wanted to bask in the bliss of getting engaged to the man she loved. They’d figure out everything else tomorrow.

5

A
moment after Hector knocked, a woman began yelling from inside the brothel.

“Ayúdeme! Ayúdeme!”

Her voice was muffled, but her words were unmistakable.

“A woman is calling for help inside.” Hector spoke loudly toward his pocket, so the arrest team would hear him through the transmitter. “I need backup. I’m going in.”

Cursing under his breath, he pulled the Glock from the back of his jeans, braced himself, and kicked the door to the basement apartment. It buckled open. Hector swung into the brothel, gun first. So much for the plan. There would be no evidence collection, no orderly execution of a search warrant. Not when there was a woman screaming for help.

The dim hallway smelled of cigarettes, latex, and sex. Hector’s eyes skimmed the interior and landed on a hulking shape at the end of the hall. One man was crouched over another, rifling through his pockets. The crouching man sprang to his feet, holding a machete. He was young, with the glassy, unfocused eyes of the very high.

“stop!” Hector yelled. “Police!”

The man raised his machete and charged at him, screaming obscenities in Spanish. Hector had years of training and experience; he’d practiced hundreds of drills—but a guy charging with a machete was still a heart-stopping moment.

Hector fired twice into the man’s center mass. The machete clattered to the floor. The guy dropped a couple of yards from Hector’s feet. Burnt gunpowder overpowered the brothel’s other smells.

The sound of gunshots inside the apartment was stunning. Hector had been on the Metropolitan Police Department for ten years; he had fired his Glock countless times on the range and in MPD training. But he’d never shot a person. His ears rang from the noise; his heart pounded from the shock of what he’d just done.

Ralph and the others rushed inside behind him. Ralph knelt down and started cuffing the guy Hector had shot. No telling what damage the shots had done—the man still had to be incapacitated.

Hector stepped around Ralph and approached the prone man whose pockets the machete guy had been going through. His hands and feet were bound with duct tape—but his entire head was gone. Where there should have been a face there was just a pool of blood on dirty carpet. His neck looked like something from a messy butcher’s shop. Hector swallowed back a wave of bile and kept going.

The hallway deposited him into a dark and musty living room. The main source of light was a boxy old TV with porn playing on it. “Ah, ah, ah!” the woman on TV moaned, her breasts bouncing frantically as she rode the man beneath her. A cheap plastic stopwatch was tacked to the wall, to track the time each john was allowed. A bookshelf was overturned, its stash of condoms, lube, and VHS porn tapes scattered on the floor. A few dingy couches slouched around the TV. Several of the cushions had been sliced open, and bits of the inner fluff floated through the air.

Another man lay on a couch; he was also bound in duct tape, with a piece of tape over his mouth. This man was alive and terrified. He met Hector’s gaze and signaled with his head toward the back rooms. Hector strode to a bedroom and threw open the door. There were two mattresses separated by a curtain, but otherwise the room was empty. He moved to the next bedroom.

It took him a moment to process the scene. A naked woman curled on a mattress, sobbing. Next to the bed, a grinning man scrambled to pull up his pants, which were tangled around his ankles. A severed human head—presumably from the body in the hallway—was impaled on top of a cheap bedside lamp. It dripped blood onto the lightbulb, which flickered in protest.

Two men in trenchcoats were fumbling with the lock on the bedroom’s back door, which led outside to the back alley. They held a third man, who wore only a bloody white T-shirt and black socks. Hector recognized him from his mug shot—Ricardo Amaya, the brothel owner, the man Hector had come here to arrest.

One of the two thugs was an average-looking Hispanic male, but the other seemed to be wearing some sort of mask. Hector’s eyes went to their hands, assessing the threat they presented. Both thugs carried machetes, but unlike the fool in the front hallway, they didn’t raise them at Hector. Instead, they opened the back door and stepped outside into the dark alley, dragging the half-naked brothel owner with them.

Hector could see another officer outside in the alley, guarding the rear door. The weird-looking thug hurled Ricardo at the officer. The officer was bowled over; he and the brothel owner fell in a tangled heap to the ground. The two thugs took off running.

Meanwhile, the man with his pants around his ankles was reaching toward a machete on the floor. Hector kicked the machete away and slammed the guy, chest-first, into the wall. Hector cuffed him, then shoved him into Ralph’s arms.

“Call for backup,” Hector said. “Two Hispanic males with machetes, wearing jeans and trenchcoats, running west toward Fourteenth Street.”

Hector ran through the bedroom’s back door and out into the dark alley. He could see the two thugs rounding the corner, more than a block away. He sprinted after them.

6

A
n hour later, Detective Tavon McGee knelt down in the brothel’s front yard. The flashing police lights illuminated a little plastic skeleton laying in the dirt. With gloved hands, he pinched the string attached to the plastic skull and held up the figurine. The little skeleton seemed to dance on its cord as the detective examined it with a flashlight.

McGee filled his lungs with the warm night air, momentarily relieved to study the kitschy representation of death as opposed to the real thing. The scene inside the brothel was a bloody mess. Two corpses: one downed by the double-tap of a police Glock, one duct-taped and decapitated. Three injured: the brothel owner with his chest carved up, drifting in and out of consciousness; a second man, duct-taped and confused; and a naked prostitute, bruised and bloody, sobbing nonsensically about
el diablo
. The three survivors were on their way to Howard University Hospital; the two dead were headed to the Medical Examiner’s Office.

The crime scene techs had their work cut out for them: Dozens of used condoms in the garbage can in the bedroom. Blood spattered on the bedroom walls. Broken furniture strewn around the living room.

It was a messy scene, and it was going to be a messy case. Two of the invaders had gotten away. The police involved in the shooting would not be able to work the case. A Use of Force investigation would be launched, to determine whether Hector Ramos’s shooting was justified. All of the officers would be placed on administrative leave pending the decision. Their union attorneys might not let them talk for weeks, if not months. McGee would have to figure much of this out on his own.

He was a homicide detective, had been for over twenty years. He was used to sorting out the relationships between the living and the dead.

A movement in the row house next door caught his eye. A dark-haired kid was cracking open the front door and peering out. The boy was maybe five years old, with knobby knees and wide brown eyes.

“This yours, little man?” McGee called. He held up the plastic skeleton. The kid nodded. McGee walked up the steps to the boy’s porch. The metal railing around the porch was decorated with dozens of identical little skeletons, as well as black rubber bats and pipe-cleaner spiders. Ghosts made of wispy white sheets hung from the ceiling, twirling slowly in the breeze. McGee handed the little skeleton to the boy. “What’s your name?”

“I’m not ’posed to talk to strangers.”

“It’s okay. I’m the police.”

McGee touched the badge hanging from a thin chain around his neck. The kid still looked worried. McGee knelt down so their heads were almost the same height. Then he smiled, revealing the gummy gap where his two front teeth used to be.

Tavon McGee was 6'4", 290 pounds, with skin the color of espresso beans. He could use his bulk to intimidate witnesses or bureaucrats. But with kids, the key was getting down on their level—and smiling. The gap in McGee’s front teeth made children feel like he was one of them. Folks speculated on why he didn’t get the hole fixed. Fact was, he’d solved more than one homicide because some child felt comfortable talking to him. No one could argue with the highest case-closure rate in D.C.

The boy said, “My name’s Jorge.”

“That must’ve been pretty scary, what you saw next door, Jorge.”

The kid looked down at the little skeleton in his hands.

“But I’m guessing you were brave, right?”

The boy met his eyes and nodded.

“What happened?”

“The Devil told me to shush,” the boy whispered. “Then he went in there with his friends.”

“What do you mean, the Devil?”

The kid held two index fingers to his forehead, simulating horns.

A woman appeared in the doorway. “Jorge!” she cried.
“Venga aqui! Ahora!
”

The kid ran into the house. McGee stood up, his knees creaking in protest. The woman tried to shut the door in his face, but he stuck a foot into the doorjamb.

“Ma’am, I need to talk to your son.”

“No hablo ínglés.”

She pushed on the door, putting pressure on McGee’s foot. He held up his badge and cocked his head. She reluctantly allowed him inside.

Ten minutes later, he walked back out again, with the names and DOB’s of everyone in the house—but no further information about the crime next door. Mom refused to allow the kid to talk to him any more. McGee would return tomorrow with a subpoena requiring the boy to testify in the grand jury. But he knew how these things worked. By tomorrow, Jorge’s mother would have convinced him that he hadn’t seen anything. McGee sighed and brushed a ghost out of his way as he went down the steps.

Hector Ramos came out of the brothel’s basement door, leading a young Hispanic man in handcuffs. The handcuffed man grinned at McGee. He’d been smiling all night. It was a strange smile, completely inappropriate for his situation. McGee wondered what the hell was wrong with him. The man wasn’t carrying ID and wasn’t giving his name. McGee glanced at the tattoos covering his neck, at the two teardrop tattoos by his eye. They’d find out his name soon enough; no way this gangbanger hadn’t been arrested and fingerprinted before.

McGee nodded at the Human-Trafficking detective. Hector was known as a solid cop and a dependable teammate. McGee wondered why he hadn’t left MPD for a higher-paying federal job years ago. Putting this mope in the cruiser would be the last official move Hector would make for a while, though. McGee doubted the detective would enjoy his time out on administrative leave. He got the impression that Hector was an action guy.

Hector stopped before putting the thug in the cruiser and spoke to McGee. “Gotta show you something.” Hector pulled out an evidence bag with a small photo inside it. “I found this in his pants pocket when I frisked him. You know who this is, right?”

McGee took the bag and looked at it. The police flashers bounced red and blue light on the photograph of a woman’s face, smiling and beautiful. McGee knew the face, but she was so out of place and unexpected here, it took him a moment to recognize her. He stopped breathing for a moment. Good Lord.

“Mirandized?” he asked Hector.

“Yeah.”

“Why do you have this picture?” McGee held it before the tattooed man.

The guy’s weird smile grew. “She’s my girlfriend, man.”

“The hell she is. Where’d you get this from?”

“Go fuck yourself is where. I want my lawyer.”

McGee shoved the guy into the back of the police cruiser and slammed the door. He paced the curb and considered calling Jack Bailey. Jack had a right to know. But McGee had heard what Jack and Anna were up to tonight. He didn’t want to ruin this night for them.

He put the picture in his pocket. Let Jack and Anna have one night of happiness and celebration. They deserved it. He’d tell them tomorrow.

We hope you enjoyed this excerpt of
Speak of the Devil
by Allison Leotta.

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Speak of the Devil