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“Someone went through this apartment already?”
“Officer Tan from Internal Affairs did a welfare check at one. There was no response to his knocking, so he entered, turned the light on, and did a walk-through. We gained access because Rio’s old patrol partner still had a key and gave it to us.” The captain nodded over to the door. “Tan came back and checked at four again. Nothing. No one.”
“Okay.” José checked his watch even though he had an idea of the time. “And just to confirm, no one’s heard from her since you spoke to her last night?”
“No one. She said she was going to go get treated at the St. Francis ER. I have a buddy inside the hospital and he said no patient was registered under her undercover name or her real one. And none of our informants or undercover officers on the street have seen her or heard anything about her.”
“Family?”
“None in Caldwell. She’s got some distant cousins out of town, and they haven’t heard from her either.”
“Husband, boyfriend, roommate?”
“None that we’re aware of.”
“And she was reporting to who?”
“Me, basically. So I feel really fucking responsible for her.”
José gave the man’s shoulder a squeeze. “Stay here in the hall, Stan.”
The captain nodded. “I got a glove if you want it?”
“Yeah, sure.” José had nitrile gloves of his own in his inside pocket, along with booties, but he took what the captain offered because sometimes people needed to feel like they were helping. “Thanks.”
Gloved up, and with his street shoes covered, José entered the apartment. There was a short hall that led to an open area with a couch and TV, and a galley kitchen. The closed doors in the space were closets and maybe a half bath. Across the way, a sliding glass door let in the ambient light from the security fixtures outside of the building.
A body had been dragged across the carpet, the heel marks a twin track that was dotted with red spots.
He followed the trail to the open door of a bedroom. Inside, the windows were covered with blinds that were partially open, and in the twilight from the external source of illumination, he could see signs of a struggle on the mattress, the sheets and blankets on the floor, a pillow off-kilter by the headboard. Streaks on the fitted sheet also suggested blood.
This was bad.
José front and centered his phone and called up a familiar number out of his contacts. After two rings, a female voice answered.
“Kim, it’s me,” he said. “Yeah. Good. You? Great. Listen, I know you’re off tonight, but I need a little help at a scene—” He closed his eyes. “You’re the best. Let me give you the address.”
When he hung up, he just stared at the bed. He had heard of an officer by the name of Hernandez-Guerrero on the force, but he hadn’t known she was undercover. Which was the point, wasn’t it.
This had to be the woman Trey had talked about.
Shit.
The best memory Rio had of her younger brother, Luis, was from the afternoon they’d taken their grandfather’s fishing boat out onto Saranac Lake. They’d been twelve and ten, and she’d been in charge of the fifteen-horsepower, hand-crank Evinrude outboard motor that had been mounted on the stern. As they’d putted along, there had been a hypnotic quality to the way they’d rocked a course along the shore. She hadn’t been much for the worms and hooks and poles, but she’d liked being in charge, and Luis and the boat had been her own little kingdom for the time they had been alone.
When she’d finally cut the motor, she could remember clear as day the two of them out there in a calm bay, the subtle sway of the hollow tin hull and the sunshine on her head and shoulders and the bright blue sky over the dark evergreens like a dream.
She was back there now, in the boat, looking past the honey-colored wooden seat in the middle. Luis was at the bow with a line in the lake, his brown eyes fiercely trained on the bobber as if he were willing a smallmouth bass to bite. He had been a scrawny kid with a big mouth, the former a fact of the scale, the latter bluster to cover a tender heart and a worried nature.
If she had known what was coming, she would have been nicer to him that day. She would have been more careful with him, too.
He’d been less hearty than everyone had thought, and that had been at the root of everything that had followed.
Then again, she’d had to find a way to rationalize it all without blaming him. Right after the overdose, she’d tried on what it felt like to hate him, and she hadn’t been able to live with that.
