Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (191 page)

Slater nodded, turned around, and entered his office. Sergei followed, but didn’t sit down even when the Sheriff indicated the guest chair opposite his desk.

“So what’s this about?” Slater asked, folding his hands on the desk top.

“Is about Angie, the woman at
Jesus Sav
– ”

“I know who she is,” Slater interrupted. “What about her? Do you know something?”

“I see the man who take her. I know this man.” Sergei looked over his shoulder again. “I need protection, man. You gotta protect me.”

“First tell me what you know. Who was the man you saw take Angie Hunt?”

“Is police,” Sergei answered, his lower lip trembling like a little kid. “Thas why I gotta be careful. Police,
politsiya,”
he repeated, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself, and didn’t expect anyone else to.

“Who? A deputy?”

“No, no man, Rosedale Police. I don’t know name, but I know face real good.”

The weight of dejection pressed down on Frankie like an anvil, heavy and weighty. Her father had given her answers – some answers – but not nearly enough. She would’ve stayed longer, insisted on details, but he was getting weaker by the moment. She could see he badly needed rest.

He insisted again that he was innocent of her mother’s murder. She believed him. She’d always believed him, even when the family and the state and the jury said otherwise. Now she knew there was another factor involved in her mother’s death – some connection with the
Lords of Death
white prison gang and Anson Stark.

What, though?
Stark had organized his white supremacy gang nearly a decade after her mother’s death.
What connection could there be?

Frankie’s mind was confused and troubled as she left the hospital. Her father had never tried to lay the blame on anyone else. Never tried to explain where he was or what he’d been doing the night of her mother’s death. Frankie knew he’d danced with her at Homecoming – that much was proof. Scores of students and teachers had seen him lead Frankie onto the gym floor in the traditional dance.

But that had been around 10:00 pm. The last she’d seen of her father was when he’d kissed her cheek and walked off through the decorated high school quad around 10:30 while she returned to mingle with her date and friends. The dance had ended at 11:00, but Frankie hadn’t gone home right away.

She and her friends had attended an after-dance party at Colleen Chin’s house. They’d goofed around, played games, and watched videos until well after 2:00 am. She wasn’t worried about breaking her curfew. This was her special night, and her parents had extended curfew because she was so reliable and trustworthy.

When her date dropped her off at 3:05 am, she had no idea what tragedy had occurred in the hours since she’d last seen her father. She had no idea her mother lay bleeding and dead from multiple knife wounds, and that Roger Franklin Milano was already in handcuffs and on his way to the police station.

Chapter 60

Angie Hunt woke from her coma much sooner than the medical staff had expected. Weak and barely able to speak from the trauma to her throat and body, she signaled for a pen and paper.
I want Cruz,
she wrote, and fell back on the pillow, exhausted from that small effort.

Cruz and Slater came immediately. Detective Andrew Flood, still in charge of the investigation, was already in the hospital lobby, looking ominously disgruntled.

“You know you can’t rely on the word of a recovering addict, supposedly recovering hooker, right?” He snapped at them as they stepped out of the elevator. “An unreliable eye witness.”

“You pissed she asked for me and not you, Flood?” Cruz raised his voice, stepped closer to the shorter man.

Slater stepped between them. “We’ve got another witness, Flood. If he corroborates what Angie says, that’s good enough for a warrant.”

“Let’s just hope she’s well enough to communicate with us,” Cruz said. He worried that the feisty, but slight, woman had been seriously damaged.

The on-call nurse allowed them five minutes with Angie. “No more,” she insisted. “She’s not out of the woods yet.”

In her hospital bed, Angie was hooked up to a wild thatch of tubes and machines. She looked weak and ashy, but her dark eyes lighted up when she saw Cruz enter in front of Slater and Flood.

“Get him outta here,” she muttered in a barely audible voice, nodding toward Flood. “I don’t like Detective Flood and he knows why.”

Flood sputtered indignantly. “It’s my case, Slater. You’ve got no right – ”

Slater put his arms around Flood and corralled him toward the door, speaking quietly but firmly. “We won’t get any information if she’s disturbed by your presence, Andy.”

“She can’t – you can’t – ”

“You know how this works, Flood. It’s your case, but my call.”

Finally, Flood spun around and stomped angrily down the corridor toward the elevators. Slater gazed after him.
Police, Sergei Petrovich had insisted,
but could he have meant a detective?

Cruz sat on the edge of Angie’s bed and took one thin hand into both his large, brown ones. An IV catheter ran from her other hand to a unit of blood. Another to a unit of saline, and a final one in her neck probably led to a feeding tube.

She looked terrible.

“You look great, Angie.”

“Quit scammin’ me, Cruz.” She tried a weak smile. “I’m no beauty at the best of times, but now – ” Her fingers fluttered uselessly on the blanket while huge tears pooled in her round, dark eyes.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Cruz soothed. “You’re a fighter, Angie. You’re going to be all right. They’re taking good care of you here.”

“I worry about my boys,” she ventured.

“Sharon’s got everything under control.”

Angie tried to snort, but failed, ending in a spate of coughing. “Shit, Sharon’s got nothin’ under control.” She sighed deeply. “Don’t matter. She’ll do.”

Cruz smiled at her spirit. “Yep, she’ll do. In a pinch,” he added after a moment.

This time she managed a croaking laugh.

“What can you tell us about your kidnapping, Angie? Who did this to you?”

Slater took the visitor chair in the room and scooted it close to the other side of the bed while Angie told them what’d happened to her from the time she left
Jesus Saves
until she woke up in the hospital. She shuddered as she described each blow and punch delivered to her, the terror of being choked to death. How she’d been absolutely certain she would die.

When she finished, she fell back, exhausted.

Slater explained how the elderly man had found her and managed to get her to safety. “He’s your hero, Angie.”

“Guess I owe that man a big thank you,” she said softly.

“Can you identify the person who did this to you?” Cruz asked.

“I sure can,” she whispered, her throat parched and scratchy with all the talking. “I always knew he hated me and my boys, despised all the street people, always rousting them, makin’ their life harder than it need be.”

“Who?”

Even though Slater and Cruz were sure that the person involved in the deaths of two homeless people in Rosedale and Angie’s kidnapping was law enforcement, they were still shocked by her next words.

“It was Officer Rawley,” she declared. “Jeff Rawley, that mean son of a bitch.”

Angie’s identification was enough confirmation for Slater to get an arrest warrant. He wasn’t going to violate procedure and risk losing the case on a technicality. Since the suspect was a cop, he wanted the arrest to go smoothly and without push-back.

Luckily, Sergei had looked through dozens of six-packs, finally pointing to the person he’d seen kidnap Angie Hunt. With both testimonies, Slater could take it straight to a judge.

He wisely chose one who wouldn’t mind being awakened in the middle of the night to sign an arrest warrant for Officer Jeff Rawley.

When informed, Lieutenant Flood was skeptical. “One of our own? You must be nuts, Slater. I’ve known Rawley for years. You’re barking up the wrong tree. This is gonna fall apart in court. You’ll see.”

The arrest was slick. Jeff Rawley feigned shock and sputtered about his rights when Slater and his deputy, along with Santiago Cruz, knocked on his seedy apartment door. He was outraged that the warrant allowed them to search the premises, but didn’t resist arrest.

It was almost too easy, Cruz thought, when they found concrete evidence that Rawley was involved in the death of Dickey Hinchey.

“Sheesh, it’s Murder 101,” Slater said to Rawley. “Don’t hang on to incriminating evidence, man.”

Slater held up the bloody remnants of what appeared to be Dickey Hinchey’s tee shirt, and the cheap little ring the homeless man always wore on his pinky finger. Cruz recognized it immediately.

Slater cuffed Rawley and placed him in the squad car, “This is good evidence. The case will hold up in court.”

“You think Rawley did them all?” Cruz asked.

Slater shook his head. “I have to believe it. The D.A. won’t buy anything else.”

Cruz felt suddenly exhausted. All he wanted was to get back to Slater’s house and check up on the ever-interesting Dr. Jones. He’d been gone from the ranch too long. Anything could’ve happened in his absence.

Chapter 61

Frankie was gone.

When Cruz arrived at the ranch house, she was nowhere to be found. Cole was resting in the master suite and looked a helluva lot better than he had yesterday. He could sit up in bed, eat a little, and even go to the john on his own.

What he couldn’t do was tell Cruz where Frankie had gone, and how she’d gotten away without transportation, isolated as Slater’s ranch was.

“She’s taken my old truck,” Slater said when he arrived an hour later after booking Rawley in the Bigler County Jail. “Must’ve hotwired it because I’ve got the only key to it.” He eyed Cruz thoughtfully. “Were you aware she had such ... skills?”

“Yeah,” Cruz complained, “something else her father must’ve taught her, along with how to handle firearms.”

“Where would she go?”

“I’d guess to see that father who taught her so much.”

“You figure she can handle herself?” Slater frowned as he reached for a beer in the refrigerator. “If someone from Stark’s gang is after her, she’s not safe.”

“She’s not safe from me,” Cruz said flatly. “I might just throttle her.”

Detective Flood was still smoldering from the news that one of the officers in the Rosedale Police Department was a serial killer. At least that’s the crap Sheriff Slater and Santiago Cruz were trying to shove down his throat.

But evidence was evidence, and Flood would do his duty despite the gloating he saw in Cruz’s eyes. The man had been a burr up his ass for a long time now, and him being in on the arrest didn’t sit well with Flood.

Still, he’d get the credit for closing the case. Sacramento PD be damned. They could figure out on their own whether Rawley had done the homeless hag in their county, or if it was someone else.

Not Flood’s problem.

Slater had hinted about another killer, someone other than Jeff Rawley, but Flood wasn’t buying that hogwash. He wasn’t going to muddy the waters by taking a wild theory to the district attorney. They had their man – as much as he didn’t like it – and he wasn’t going to give up the limelight of a good arrest by chasing down a rabbit hole.

Still, hard to believe a mealy-mouthed beat cop like Jeff Rawley was capable of all that mayhem. You never really knew a person deep inside, he guessed.

The guard on Anson Stark’s payroll managed to get the inmate a sit-down with his second in command, Bones Griff. They met in the corridor adjacent to the dog run where Stark went for his daily exercise. A small part of the hallway wasn’t secured by video cameras, a flaw in the supermax’s design.

As they stood near the entrance to the SHU exercise yard, Stark could barely control his fury. He seldom allowed himself to lose control of his temper. In fact, he could remember only two times in his entire life when he’d gone into a blinding rage. Even when he committed murder, he did the deed with cold calculation.

Now Bones was testing him to his limits.

“Perkins blew it. I had to put a gang member on her,” Bones explained in a puerile tone. “He was supposed to get both of them, but something happened. The bitch fought back. Who knew she’d be so ... lethal.”

“I don’t want explanations. I want results.” Stark’s face purpled with unleashed anger. He took several deep breaths before continuing. “What about Cole Hansen?”

Bones shook his head. “Left him bleeding to death on the doc’s bedroom floor.”

“He ran out on a job before completing it?” the Professor asked flatly.

Bones felt a shiver of cold trickle down his spine. “Yes, but he – it’s complicated. The situation was dangerous. He had no choice.”

“I don’t care!” the Professor grabbed Bones by the throat, pressed his thumbs on his windpipe. Although the leader of the white gang was a half foot shorter than his lieutenant and seventy pounds lighter, he took Bones down with the ease of a street fighter.

Bones gagged, suffocated, saw stars flicker behind his eyeballs. He sank to his knees, saw black before the Professor let go.

“You were supposed to put Perkins on the job.”

Bones coughed and sputtered, still kneeling. “He – he had to tie up some things first.”

The Professor grabbed a hank of Griff’s hair, pulling tightly until the skull felt like it was on fire. “Perkins owes the
Lords
first. Understand? If he doesn’t have the job done by this time tomorrow, I’ll gut you like a fish.” He paused and took a cleansing breath. “Nod if you understand.”

Bones nodded, feeling the warm, wet flow of urine stain his pants.

“You, Bones, not Perkins. See that it’s done.”

Crossing the street from the hospital emergency room exit to the parking lot, Frankie was so engrossed in her thoughts she didn’t see the car until it was almost on her. The vehicle slammed into her body and the front bumper lifted her into the air, helicoptering her wildly before depositing her on the hard concrete curb.