“I’m afraid not,” Paige replied.

  Dwayne’s face paled. “What is it?”

  In ideal circumstances, the next of kin was the first informed, but sometimes exceptions had to be made. Zach made eye contact with Dwayne. “We found Dominick, and he’s—”

  The man’s mouth fell open. “He’s…?”

  “We’re sorry to inform you, but Dominick is dead. He was murdered.” Zach laid it out there, sticking to the cold, hard facts but delivering them with kindness.

  Dwayne put a hand to his forehead and spun slowly in a circle. “No, this can’t be happening. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone want to kill him?”

  “We were wondering if you’d know,” Paige said gently. It was a logical counter, but it was unlikely that Banks had known his killer.

  He shook his head. “No. He was a nice guy. He was always on time, did his job. Never got any complaints from him. The other guys, they bitch all the time.”

  “We’re sorry for your loss.” The sentiment, which was intended as genuine, stuck to Zach’s heart like a burr. He’d spoken that line so many times over the years, he wondered if the repetition had dulled its meaning.

  Dwayne nodded his head slowly. “The car’s in the back.”

  “Before we go…” Zach’s words had the man halting and looking at him. “We need to know if any of these men look familiar.” Zach took out his phone and brought up an array of men’s photos that included their unsub. He extended the phone to Dwayne.

  Dwayne regarded him and the phone with hesitation. Eventually, he reached for it.

  “Take your time,” Zach told him. If Dwayne did recognize the unsub and how he knew the guy was useful to the prosecution of the case, he could be called to testify. That’s where the photo array versus a single picture came into play. The response wouldn’t be prejudiced, and Zach wouldn’t have burned a witness.

  Dwayne pinched his fingers to the screen, enlarging and shrinking the image. About a minute passed before he gave the phone back to Zach. “I’ve never seen any of these men.” He rubbed above his left eye. “Did one of them kill Dom?”

  “We’re still investigating,” Paige replied, drawing the man’s gaze.

  “You obviously think one of them did,” Dwayne said sadly.

  “We do.” Paige made the admission on an exhale, and it had Zach turning to look at her. This case was wearing on her. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot. Her hair, which normally fell in soft curls, was lying rather limp, and Zach felt it had little to do with the humidity. Her shoulders, which were typically high and back, were lowered and hunched forward, too.

  “Well, I hope you find the son of a bitch because Dom didn’t deserve this.” Dwayne’s cheeks reddened as his anger surfaced.

  “We’ll do our best to bring Dominick justice,” Zach said.

  The front door opened, and two CSIs entered. One was in his late fifties with a thin frame except for a small beer belly. The other was in his thirties with a mustache and a pleasant smile.

  “And so it begins,” Dwayne lamented.

  Zach and Paige introduced themselves to the investigators.

  Beer Belly held out his hand. “Ken Trevors, and this is Alan Bury.”

  Alan gave a mock salute in greeting.

  “Now that everyone knows everyone, follow me.” Dwayne took off through the door to the back. Sadness and anger emanated from the man as the four of them followed him into the garage.

  “Well, this is it.” Dwayne pointed to the only white Chrysler 300 in the garage.

  Zach pulled out the search warrant and handed it to Dwayne, who took it and stuffed it into his back pocket without so much as looking at it. “I’m sorry, but the car needs to be kept out of service until it’s been fully processed,” Zach said.

  “And depending on what we find,” Ken chimed in, “we might need to take the car with us.”

  “Do whatever you need to. The keys are on the front seat.” Dwayne sounded defeated and waved a hand toward the second-floor office. “Antonio’s in my office. Should he have a lawyer present?”

  “There shouldn’t be any need for that,” Zach told him. “We just have a couple questions for him.”

  Dwayne nodded and led the way to the office. The space was what one would expect for being over a garage. No surface would pass the white-glove test. Dust was everywhere, the level of grime indicating it hadn’t been cleaned in months. A simple executive desk shared the space with a couple of file cabinets, a swivel chair, and a few molded plastic chairs with steel legs. A man was sitting in one, slouched down, reading a book. He closed the mystery novel when they shadowed the doorway. Zach had a feeling the man wouldn’t care for the genre as much once murder touched his reality.

  “Agents, this is Antonio Luna,” Dwayne said. Zach was impressed by how well the owner was holding himself together given the news that had been unloaded on him.

  Antonio stood and tucked the book under an arm. Zach and Paige gave Antonio their names.

  Dwayne cleared his throat and locked eyes with Zach. “Can I tell him?”

  Zach nodded. “If you’d like to be the one to do so, that’s fine.”

  “Dom was murdered.” Dwayne served it quickly, and Antonio gasped.

  “Are you being serious right now?” Antonio asked, eyes wide and darting.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Zach replied.

  “Why? What happened? Do you know who did it?” The stream of questions rushed from the driver.

  “Let’s just sit down and talk for a bit.” Zach sat in one of the chairs across the room from where Antonio now stood, and Paige took a seat beside Zach.

  Dwayne jacked a thumb toward the door. “Should I go or…?”

  “Can he stay?” Antonio rushed out.

  “He can, if that’s what you want,” Paige responded.

  Antonio nodded, sitting back down, and Dwayne rounded his desk and sat in the chair there.

  Paige crossed her legs and leaned in toward Antonio. “We just have a few questions.”

  “Whatever it is, I’ll do my best to help.” Antonio held his book flat in his lap with both hands gripping the spine.

  “Was anything different about the car when you picked it up for your shift today?” Zach asked, starting there.

  “Not that I noticed.”

  “What about a different smell to the car? Were there any dominant scents in the air?” Zach’s question was a reach. Everyone had their own distinct smell and no doubt the car would absorb a cacophony of fragrances from the fares, but maybe, just maybe, their unsub had left a distinct odor behind.

  Antonio scrunched up his brow. “Umm, I’m not sure.”

  “Where was the car parked when you picked it up?” Paige asked.

  “In its usual spot in the lot. Nothing stood out to me at all. I just got in and got to work.”

  “So you worked your whole shift from behind the wheel?” Zach queried.

  “Of course.”

  “No need to go in the back seat or the trunk?” Zach was just being proactive. They still didn’t know where Banks was killed, but they’d ruled out his home. To transport the body, the unsub could have put it in the trunk as Brandon had suggested. It could explain the positioning of the lividity. Crime Scene could verify all this, assuming they did find forensic evidence.

  Antonio glanced at his boss, then looked at Zach. “No, I just stayed in the driver’s seat. Oh, I set my lunch bag on the floor of the front passenger’s side.”

  “Okay, good to know,” Zach said, not even sure if it would factor in, but best to be armed with more knowledge than less.

  “How well did you know Dominick?” Paige asked.

  Antonio shook his head. “Not very well. With his shift starting a couple hours after mine, we rarely crossed paths. When we did, we’d say, ‘Hi, how you doin’?’ and things like that, but no real conversation.”

  Zach nodded and pulled up the photo array on his phone again. He caught Dwayne’s eyes as he did, and angst etched the owner’s facial features. Zach walked his phone over to Antonio. “Do any of these men look familiar to you?”

  Antonio studied the images. “Can’t say that they do.” He squinted. “I’m guessing that’s not what you want to hear.”

  “All we want is the truth.” Zach gave Antonio a tight but hopefully reassuring smile.

  “We were told that a driver filled in for Dominick last night around eleven,” Paige said, flicking a look at the owner.

  Dwayne’s posture stiffened, but he remained silent.

  “What do you know about that?” Paige turned her attention to Antonio. “Did Dominick have people step in for him before?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” Antonio’s gaze skipped to his boss, and Zach wondered if the answer would be different without Dwayne in the room. “But that’s not a part of my job to know,” Antonio added.

  “It is important that you tell us the truth,” Zach said, essentially reiterating his earlier statement.

  “The truth is, I don’t really know.” Antonio frowned.

  “Okay, that’s fine. Thanks for your help.” Zach pulled a card from his pocket and handed it to Antonio. “If you do think of anything at all, call me.”

  Antonio took the card and tucked it between the pages of his book. He tilted his head toward Dwayne, and with that, he got up and left the room.

  Dwayne leaned back and clasped his hands over his stomach. “He seems to be taking Dom’s death better than I am.”

  Zach hadn’t thought either man was handling it well. “We all process loss differently,” was all Zach said.

  “I suppose.” Dwayne took a pen and tapped its tip against the top of his desk.

  “We’re going to need something else from you,” Zach said, pulling a second warrant from his pocket and handing it over to the owner. “We need access to the GPS records for Dominick’s car, as well as the call log from his shift.”

  “We’ve been quite open with you, but you want more still.” Dwayne’s jaw clenched. “Very well. I’ll get it together for you.” He rolled toward his desk and started clicking away on his keyboard.

  Zach and Paige excused themselves and went to check on how the CSIs were making out with the car.

  Ken was sealing up some lifted prints on a piece of clear plastic the size of an index card. “It’s a print gold mine in there.”

  If their unsub had been there, he hadn’t bothered to wipe the vehicle down. Though that would have been more suspicious. Not that prints would necessarily get them anywhere in identifying their unsub anyway. Zach wasn’t holding his breath. It was either panic and not thinking clearly that made the unsub leave the trace behind, or he didn’t fear it leading to his identity.

  “That’s half to be expected,” Paige said.

  “We’re just getting started here. Sorry there’s not much more to say at this point.” Ken pressed his lips together and ducked his head and arms back into the car.

  Zach looked around for Alan and found him leaning inside the trunk. Zach moved toward him, but neither he nor Paige said anything to disturb him. Alan was collecting something from the carpet with a pair of tweezers.

  “Should we go?” Paige asked.

  “Let me just grab the reports from Dwayne.” Zach trudged back to the owner, his steps heavy. Forensics played an important role in solving murders, just as profiling did in finding killers. Sadly, both felt like they took far too long sometimes.

  -

  Twenty-One

  The face from the restaurant video was haunting me, even with the fresh download of Dominick Banks’s crime scene. I knew that face from somewhere, and not knowing where was going to drive me mad. It was sort of like when you tried to remember the name of a movie or an actor and it wouldn’t come to you. Or even worse, when it’s just the glimpse of an image or the trace of a thought and you couldn’t even come up with the right words for Google to find the answer for you. Until I figured out why he looked familiar—whether he made me think of someone I’d seen in my life or someone who came up within the confines of the case—it was going to eat away at me.

  The four of us, plus Marsh, were in the conference room back at the station. She was standing in front of a map of Miami that was attached to a whiteboard with black magnets in the corners. Small, colored magnetic pins were scattered on the map. Marsh was prepared to school us on geography.

  Jack and I had briefed everyone on how we’d made out with Banks’s neighbors, which hadn’t been great. In fact, they hadn’t produced any leads. No one saw or heard anything. It was like the unsub we were after was a ghost.

  “I’ve read the GPS report from Checker Limousine. It shows the car going to Magical Bar & Grill at nine thirty, like we figured it would, but it didn’t leave until eleven when it went to Bridges’s, where the car showed at around eleven thirty. From there it goes dead, just as they told us at Checker,” Zach said.

  “Banks was killed in the bar’s parking lot,” I said.

  “Looks like,” Zach replied.

  “So our unsub obviously dropped off Banks’s body after he’d disabled the tracker and before he returned the car. It was sometime during the wee hours, as we thought. That’s probably why none of the neighbors saw anything,” I reasoned. “They’d be asleep.”

  “Okay, the call log gave us a little more than we’d expected,” Paige said. “There were a few pickups on Bridges’s account, starting with a pickup at Kelter’s house at eleven thirty yesterday morning.” Paige glanced at Zach and Marsh. “There was also a pickup at a movie theater at three forty-five yesterday afternoon.”

  “So Kelter did go to the movies,” Zach said.

  Paige nodded. “It would seem so. She got to Bridges’s at four fifteen. Next call charged to Bridges’s account was a pickup at her house at eight thirty.”

  “About the time Bridges said that Kelter got restless and went ahead to the bar,” Marsh chimed in.

  “Yes.” Paige pointed her finger at Marsh and smiled. “Then the pickup for Bridges at the hospital and the drop-off at nine thirty at the bar.”

  “Good,” Jack said. “And how did Crime Scene make out?”

  “They were still working over the vehicle when we left to come back here,” Zach replied. “The lead CSI said they’d be at it for a while. They might even bring the vehicle in to examine in more depth.”

  Jack turned to Marsh. “All right. Tell us what you have.”

  Marsh pointed to a red pin on the map. “That’s La Casa de Jose.” She pointed to another pin. “Miami-Dade County Courthouse, where West’s head was left.” Another pin. “Hanover & Smith, LLP, where Sullivan’s head was delivered.”

  “All in the downtown area,” I said. “Within nine city blocks.”

  “It would indicate he is comfortable in the area, possibly lives or work around there.” Paige reached for the water pitcher and filled her glass. She took a quick sip and added, “Hanover & Smith represented Sullivan specifically, but both trials were heard at Miami-Dade County Courthouse. I’m sure Kelter’s was, too.”

  Marsh nodded.

  “Could there be something to that? Maybe our unsub has a past connection to the courthouse?” Paige wondered aloud, glancing at Marsh.

  “Likely a broad sweep,” Marsh said. “All DUI offenses for the area would be tried there.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.” Paige blew out a breath that had her bangs flying up.

  There was something to Paige’s statement. “He liked the courthouse for his first platform,” I said, “but didn’t return there with Sullivan’s head. As we know, her head was delivered directly to her lawyer. He took a more brazen approach. He wasn’t content to just drop her head off, he wanted it hand-delivered. I think he wanted to make more of a splash, an impact, with his second victim.”

  “Having the entire city see the report about the head on the courthouse steps wasn’t enough to satisfy him?” Marsh argued, testing my patience.

  I was about to rebut when Zach said, “I think Brandon might be right. The courthouse steps weren’t intimate enough, personal enough.”

  Bathed in validation and loving the feeling, I went on. “By delivering Sullivan’s head to the lawyer’s office, was it also meant as a threat to the lawyer? We know that Kelter had received hate mail and so had West, so who’s to say that the lawyers didn’t get any directed at them?” I leveled my gaze on Marsh, curious if she’d ever looked into the matter.

  “I think we’re getting off topic here. Let’s stay focused.” With that, Jack brought any warm and gooey feelings I had to an end. He got up and traced the nine-block perimeter with a finger. “So we can see our unsub gravitates to this area, but where do the victims live?”

  Marsh pointed out three blue pins and rattled off the surnames as she went along. “All three are outside of the activity radius.”

  “Where’s Bridges’s place on the map?” I asked.

  “Here.” Marsh put a fingertip to a green pin. It was outside the activity radius, too.

  Jack got to his feet and paced. “Where were West’s and Sullivan’s accidents?”

  “West’s was at the corner of Northeast First Avenue and Northeast Second Street.” Marsh pointed to a yellow pin on the board. “That’s only two blocks from West’s campus.”

  “It’s also to the west of Northeast First Street,” Zach said. “Whereas Kelter’s church is to the east.”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” Marsh said. “West and his friends had been drinking at Club One on Northwest First Street and Northeast Second Avenue.” This time a purple pin.

  Marsh was nothing if not a slave to color coding. Red for disposal sites and the restaurant where our presumed unsub had been. Blue pins for victims’ homes. Green for Bridges’s residence. Yellow for accident sites. Purple for the victims’ drinking spots.

  Speaking of…

 

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