The Scorpion, page 2
“She’ll be here this morning. I’ve arranged for her to be in the interrogation room. Please make sure the evidence box is sealed again properly after she’s done.”
Bailey nodded, taking that as her dismissal. He stopped her before she walked out.
“Oh, and Bailey, if there’s anything suspicious about her, if she starts asking a lot of questions, you’ll let me know, right?”
“Of course.”
She left him, feeling as frustrated today as she had two years ago when she’d first transferred to Brownsville. Yep, Lieutenant, you’ll be the first one I tell if she’s asking questions. “You can count on me,” she murmured to herself.
“Detective Bailey?”
Bailey turned, seeing Mrs. Jimenez coming toward her. “Good morning, Rosaline.”
“Buenos dias, Kristen,” she said. “The lieutenant said to let you know when the reporter got here.”
Bailey nodded. “What about the evidence box?”
“Yes, I sent word down to Officer Reyes. He’ll bring it up.”
“Thank you. Lieutenant Marsh said to put it in the interrogation room.”
“Sí. I take her there now, yes?”
“Yes, please. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Bailey stopped by her desk—her extremely clean and tidy desk—and picked up her coffee mug.
“What’s up, Bailey? Saw you in the lieutenant’s office.”
Bailey glanced at Marcos, her so-called partner. “Oh, just more exciting detective work for me,” she said. “I’m keeping a reporter company.”
He nodded. “I heard. Some cold case, right?”
“Yeah. How did you know? He didn’t tell me much about it.”
“Oh, you know. Word spreads,” he said.
She filled her coffee cup, ignoring the others in the squad room. They all treated her the same way. As an outsider. Marcos treated her a little better than the rest, if only because technically, they were partners. It wasn’t like they worked cases together. At least not in the field. Her job was usually phone work while he did the real police work. At first, she thought it was because she was a woman and they weren’t used to working with women. But after a few months, she realized it was because she wasn’t from there, she wasn’t a native, and she didn’t work her way up through the system. She was an outsider with connections. And so they didn’t trust her, and they weren’t going to let her inside their little team. Even after two years. It didn’t matter that she put her time in at Houston P.D. It didn’t matter that she had a bullet wound to prove it. It didn’t matter how many commendations she came with. They weren’t going to let her in. After a while, her response was to ignore them and go about her business, knowing she was just biding her time until she could leave here. Maybe go back to Houston. She missed the challenges there, she missed the camaraderie of the guys. They were a tight unit. They were a team. A good team. And they would welcome her back, she knew.
“How long have you been here, Marcos?”
“A long time, Bailey. Why?”
“I’m wondering how long I have to be here before you guys start treating me like a cop,” she said.
“I think that’s a beef to take up with Marsh. Everyone sees how he treats you and just follows his lead.”
“What are you? In your forties? Why are you still a detective?”
Marcos laughed. “I like it. I don’t aspire to be a sergeant or a lieutenant. Too much bullshit.”
“You were military, right?”
“Army, yeah. Just four years. When I got out, I joined the force. I was twenty-three and tough as they come.” He laughed. “Or so I thought.” The smile left his face. “Stick with it, Bailey. Marsh can’t ride your ass forever.”
She blew out a heavy sigh and nodded, then made her way down the hall to the interrogation room. Reyes was just bringing the evidence box up on a cart, and she held the door open for him.
“Call me when you’re done and I’ll come back for it.”
Bailey nodded and followed him inside. The reporter was younger than she’d expected, blond hair layered around her face framing her expressive hazel eyes. She returned the smile of the other woman and shook her hand.
* * *
“I’m Marty Edwards,” she said, offering her hand and flashing her practiced smile.
“Detective Bailey.”
“Oh, my. Your lieutenant must really be concerned with me if he’s pulling a detective in to babysit,” she teased, hoping the detective had a sense of humor. The smile faded from her face at Marty’s words.
“My babysitting duties have little to do with you and everything to do with me.” She pointed at the box. “Shall we?”
Ah. So the detective was in the doghouse for something. Not wanting to question her statement, she nodded. “Yes, let’s get started. I assume you’ll want to break the evidence seal?”
Marty pulled out her legal-sized notepad and the mechanical pencil she hardly ever used. She glanced up as the detective sliced open the seal with the small paper cutter the officer had left. All of the notes she’d made were on her laptop and she wished she’d had the foresight to print them out. At least the questions she’d come up with. Because there was only one reason she was in the interrogation room. She was being monitored. Anything she said would be recorded, and she had no doubt that the cameras would zoom in on her laptop screen should she open it. She thought it ironic at how paranoid she was being just because she thought Lieutenant Marsh was paranoid enough to bug the room in the first place.
“Here you are.”
“Thank you, Detective Bailey. I’m sorry you have to sit in here with me. I’m sure it’ll be terribly boring for you.”
“I’ll try to stay out of your way.” The detective pulled out a chair at the other end of the table. “Do you want any coffee or anything?”
“No, thanks,” Marty said, holding up her water bottle. “I learned long ago that coffee in squad rooms was brutal.”
“That’s true.” She pointed beside the box. “There’s a pair of latex gloves there, if you plan to handle the evidence.”
Marty nodded. She knew the routine. She pulled the evidence box closer and peered inside. There wasn’t a whole lot to it. Two folders. One, the medical examiner’s report. The other contained the reports and witness questionnaires from the police. She set them aside for now and slipped on the gloves before taking out the plastic bag. Inside were bloody clothes, the ones Carlos was wearing when they found him. They appeared to be a newer pair of jeans and a button-down blue shirt. Not something she would imagine a gang member wearing. Another bag contained personal items—a watch, a wallet and a chain with a religious medallion on it. All three were coated with dried blood. She carefully opened up the wallet, seeing a handsome young man smiling back at her. His driver’s license. There were a few bills—nineteen dollars in all—and a creased family photo. She recognized Carlos and assumed the younger girl beside him was his sister, Kesara Romero. The others most likely were his parents and older siblings. Again, nothing about the wallet screamed “gang member.” The only other item in the box was in a separate bag—a glass paperweight with a scorpion encased inside it. She turned it around in her hands, noting that the felt fabric on the back of it was soaked in blood, now long dried.
She put everything back into the box and took her gloves off, wanting to make notes of all she found before reading through the reports. She held the pad protectively in front of her, using some of the shorthand she’d developed years ago. If her suspicions were true and she was being taped, she doubted the camera would be able to pick up her scribble. Her handwriting was atrocious, and even she had a hard time deciphering it.
“A reporter who uses a legal pad instead of a laptop. I didn’t think those existed any longer.”
Marty looked over at the detective.“I prefer the old-fashioned way,” she said. Then she followed the detective’s gaze to her bag, which, it was blatantly obvious, held a laptop. She met the woman’s eyes, wondering if she would say anything. She didn’t.
After making notes of everything in the evidence bags, she picked up the medical examiner’s file and flipped through it, glancing over the medical jargon. She would read it more thoroughly tomorrow. Today, she just wanted to get a feel for things and her hour limit was fast approaching. She jotted down some medical terms she wanted to clarify, then slowed her reading when she found the passage she was looking for. As Kesara had said, her brother had been mutilated. His eyes had been gouged out, his tongue removed, and his abdomen split open the length of his torso. His skull had been smashed. No wonder everything was soaked in blood. Cause of death—“blunt force trauma.” A nice way of saying he’d been butchered, Marty thought. The eyes and tongue were removed antemortem.
“Jesus,” she whispered. She glanced at the detective, finding her watching. She closed the file quickly and picked up the police reports. They were very generic, almost as if the detectives were going through the motions. And most likely they were. Gang killings, especially when the police thought both victim and perpetrator were involved, seldom got a thorough investigation.
She wrote down the names of the persons interviewed, already knowing who they were from Kesara. The police had spoken to the mother, the sister, a high school teacher and a supposed friend. She read through the brief account of what the mother, sister and teacher had said. Each was very similar. Good kid, good grades. Never involved with a gang. The friend—or “alleged” friend, since Kesara had told her none of the family had ever heard of this boy before—is the one who said Carlos was a gang member and that he was on his way to meet them that night. A rival gang had intercepted him. She stared at the writing at the end of the file: “No witnesses. No suspects. Gang-related.” And stamped across that in bold letters, “UNSOLVED.” She flipped through the pages again, surprised that there were no photos of the crime scene. She picked up the medical examiner’s file, but there were no photos there either.
That’s odd.
She started copying, word for word, the statement of Javier Torres, the alleged friend. Nowhere in the file could she find an address for him or any other identification, such as a Social Security number or driver’s license information. She glanced again at the detective and again found her watching. Did she dare ask what their normal procedure was here regarding informants? Detective Bailey looked friendly enough. There was nothing about her that Marty found threatening, and she assumed the detective would happily answer her questions. But again, the sense that she was being filmed and recorded caused her to keep her questions to herself.
Turned out it didn’t matter. There was a quick knock on the door before it opened. The receptionist stuck her head inside.
“Excuse me, Detective, but the lieutenant said to remind you the hour was up.”
“Thank you, Rosaline.”
Marty sat back, her annoyance showing on her face, she was sure. Her watch told her she’d been in here for fifty-two minutes. And at least five of those minutes had been spent waiting for the evidence box to arrive.
“I’m sorry, Miss Edwards, but we’ll have to call it a day.”
Marty stared at her, noting that the apology was sincere. “No problem,” she said as she began gathering her things. “And please call me Marty. I’ll be back in the morning. Will that suit you?”
“I’m at your disposal.” The detective reached into her pocket and pulled out a card. “If you’re going to be later or if you want to schedule a particular time, just call me. I’ll have the evidence box waiting for you.”
“Thank you,” she said, almost in a whisper. Detective Bailey nodded, and Marty knew her suspicions were correct. The room was indeed bugged.
* * *
The reporter had barely made it down the hall before Lieutenant Marsh walked into the room. Bailey ignored him as she resealed the evidence box.
“So how did it go?”
Bailey shrugged. “She didn’t ask any questions.” Bailey knew full well he had watched the whole thing. She didn’t doubt that he’d recorded it as well. She also knew the reporter most likely suspected the same.
“And she’s coming back tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
He came closer, elbowing her out of the way as he spun the box around, looking at the label. “I vaguely remember this case. Gang killing,yes.”He looked at her.“These are nearly impossible to solve. Those bastards disappear into thin air when they want to.”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
Lieutenant Marsh tapped the top of the box while he stared at her. “So, Bailey, this reporter, you think she’s going to interview people again or what?”
“She didn’t say.”
“What does your gut tell you, Bailey?”
Her gut told her that Marsh was awfully worried about this reporter snooping in a ten-year-old cold case, that’s what. But she kept the bored expression on her face, telling him what he wanted to hear. “Reporters ask questions. I would imagine she’s going to try to interview again, yes.”
“Then perhaps we should offer our services. What do you think?”
“So you want me to what? Follow her?”
“Nothing quite so obvious, Bailey. I thought perhaps we could offer to escort her around town. Take her to the crime scene area, that type of thing. After all, she doesn’t know her way around Brownsville. I would hate to have her on the wrong side of town. You know, wrong time-wrong place. Pretty blond thing like that. Anything could happen.”
Bailey was stunned by the underlying threat in his words and the coldness of his eyes. Marty Edwards was definitely snooping into something she shouldn’t. “Sure, if that’s what you want. It’s not like I’m loaded down with cases or anything.”
“Good, Bailey. Because if you play your cards right, this might just be the ticket to get you a little more involved, shall we say.”
She forced a smile to her face, hoping she appeared eager. “Yes, sir. That would be great. What do you want me to do?”
“Just be as accommodating as possible. Take her where she wants to go. Gain her confidence, Bailey. I want to know what she’s up to. I want to know why this case,” he said as he tapped the box again. “It could be, as she said, she’s writing a book. If so, all the better. Just find out what you can. Keep me informed, Bailey.”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
“Good girl. There might be a future for you here after all.”
Bailey strove to keep her face expressionless, knowing the cameras were still live. Good girl, my ass.
CHAPTER FIVE
Marty leaned back against the pillows on the bed, juggling her laptop and her scribbled notes as she finished transcribing them. She read through the notes she’d loaded days earlier, the account the sister gave her, her own impressions after speaking with Kesara.And by no stretch of the imagination could she pencil Carlos Romero into a gang. He just didn’t fit the profile. Yet the police, based upon a statement by Javier Torres, had concluded that Carlos was not only a gang member, but that he was killed by an unknown assailant from a rival gang. Case closed.
Marty ran a hand through her hair, pushing it off her forehead as she scanned the statement from Torres again. According to him, Carlos had near daily involvement with the Los Rebeldes,a small gang that was trying to gain a foothold on the southeast side of Brownsville. Marty shook her head. If you believed his teacher’s statement, Carlos went to school every day. He was responsible and studious. He was involved in athletics. He had an after-school job, according to his sister. None of that pointed to “daily involvement” in a gang.
Looking at it from the outside, ten years later, it almost appeared as if the police were looking for any excuse to close the case without investigating it. And labeling it gang-related was the easiest way. Which led to another question. Why?
Marty slid the laptop onto the bed and brought her legs up and crossed them, her mind racing over the many questions she wanted to ask. She wondered if the two investigating officers were still on the force. And if so, whether Lieutenant Marsh would allow her to question them.
“I’m going to guess no,” she said to her empty hotel room.
Perhaps Detective Bailey would be willing to shed some light on the case. She seemed friendly enough. But she didn’t dare ask her questions while in the interrogation room. Marty’s gaze moved across the room to the small desk, lighting on the business card the detective had given her. She could call her, but that seemed a bit brash. Maybe after their hour session tomorrow she could get her alone long enough to ask a few questions. Or better yet, invite her on a lunch date.
Marty was used to flirting with men to get answers. She saw no reason she couldn’t do the same with Detective Bailey. Of course, her stereotyping could be way off, but she didn’t think so. It wasn’t that Bailey exuded a masculine presence. She didn’t. Her dark hair was longer than Marty’s, touching her shoulders. And even though her face had a natural attractiveness, Marty had noted the woman wore just the barest touch of makeup. But lesbian police officers who were out had a certain air about them, she had discovered last year while researching a piece she was writing on discrimination in the workplace. So she would turn on her charm and try to get Bailey to join her for lunch. Maybe she would wear a skirt tomorrow after all.
CHAPTER SIX
Bailey picked up her phone without looking at it, her eyes still focused on the online newspaper she was reading.
“Good morning, Detective Bailey. It’s Marty Edwards.”
Bailey pulled her attention from the computer. “Good morning, Miss Edwards.”
“Please call me Marty. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
Bailey looked around at the near-empty squad room. “No, of course not. I’m at your beck and call, remember?”
“Well, I’m going to stop at the Starbucks down here on the corner,” she said. “Can I get you something?”
