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Chapter 64
They struggled on the couch as Willie used his size and strength to keep the pistol pointed away from him. Alex wished she could get to her stiletto, but she’d have to make do with just her fist for now.
She punched him once directly in the Adam’s apple. The shock and inability to breathe made him shrink back and ease his grip on her wrist. Her next blow was to his solar plexus, knocking out any wind he had left.
That sent him off Alex, and he struggled to stand up.
He took a few steps back and ended up in almost the exact spot Alex wanted. She was lying on top of his dead cousin. It didn’t line up any better than this. She fired once, and the bullet hit him in almost the same place where she had punched him.
He slapped both his hands over the wound in a futile effort to ease the pain and stem the bleeding. He stood staring at Alex, as if he couldn’t believe she’d do something like that in his own home.
Willie just stared at her, trying to form a word. He wheezed and coughed. Blood mixed with his spittle as it flew onto the coffee table.
The ESPN music blared from the TV again.
After what felt like hours, but was really only ten seconds, he dropped to his knees, then fell forward.
She got off the couch and checked his pulse. It was weak for a few beats, then faded out completely.
Alex listened carefully for any movement in the hallway or any signs of concern from the neighbors. There was nothing. Just as she expected.
It was a little more difficult than she had anticipated, but the results were exactly what she wanted. She slipped on the plastic gloves she always kept in her purse. The one time a date had found them, she told him the oval case contained a diaphragm. Of all her professional equipment, gloves were the easiest things to hide in a purse or suitcase.
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nbsp; Now was the time for her meticulous nature to come out. She had to arrange the crime scene. She put the Taurus semiautomatic pistol in Julio’s hand. She found the spent casing the gun had ejected when she shot Willie and rubbed it on Julio’s hand and arm, then tossed it back onto the floor. She thought that would be enough to fool people if they bothered to test the dead men for gunshot residue.
Then she picked up the revolver, removed the spent casing from the cylinder, and rubbed it on Willie’s right hand. Then she returned the casing and nestled the revolver in his hand.
She stepped back and admired her work. The time of death was close enough to make it hard for the medical examiner to determine that the shots came fifteen minutes apart. The longer the two bodies stayed here undetected, the more difficult the task would be.
She spent another minute making sure the apartment was in order and wiping down any surface she’d come in contact with.
Alex slipped out of the apartment. That familiar exhilaration sweeping through her. She may not have been paid, but she’d handled something vital, and she had done it well.
As she came down the stairs, Alex noticed the woman she’d helped with the groceries earlier standing in her doorway.
Alex waited a moment until the woman turned back into her apartment. Then she scampered down the last few stairs and darted out the back door without anyone seeing her.
There were no police cars racing to the apartment, so no one had been alarmed by the two separate gunshots. She knew people in a building like this wouldn’t cooperate much with the police. Even if they figured out it was a staged double murder, they had nothing they could pin on her.
She walked along the sidewalk down 129th Street. Now she could focus totally on Michael Bennett.
Chapter 65
I was sitting at my desk in Manhattan North Homicide when I noticed a message on my computer alerting me to an active homicide investigation up on 129th Street in Harlem.
Normally I keep my eyes open for homicides in general just so I know what’s going on in the city. I found enough to keep me busy on the homicides I was assigned to, so I didn’t run off to every crime scene.
But the address made me take a second look. It was Julio Laza’s building.
I had a bad feeling.
I arrived on the scene about half an hour later. Before I could pull out my ID, I saw Roddy Huerta step out from the apartment and say, “It’s okay. This old geezer is with me.”
I carefully stepped into the apartment, avoiding the crime-scene techs and photographers.
Roddy stood next to me and said, “Happened sometime yesterday. The neighbors said they were so used to loud noises and men coming and going all the time that they ignored it.”
