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“There were four men,” she inserts. Timid and gentle. “Four. Plus Lombardo. The one in front, the one whose eyes I saw, he was asking about payment or something. And Lorenzo called him Vallejo and was panicking. He was sobbing and promising he would deliver.”
“Deliver what?” Archer demands. “Money? Drugs?”
“I don’t know. Money, I think. I guess I got the impression he was a dealer and owed Vallejo the money.”
“What happened next?” Fletcher asks, gentler than his partner. “Who said what?”
“Um…” Rory nibbles on her pinky fingernail and shakes her head. “Lorenzo said he would deliver soon, I think. One of the other men started hitting.”
“Which other man?” Archer questions. “Which one was hitting?”
“The one from the other day. Marcos.”
“What did you do?” Mayet joins the fray and startles Rory with her question. “Marcos was hitting Lorenzo, and Lorenzo was terrified of Vallejo. What did you do?”
“Well…” Her cheeks warm as she glances across at me. “At first, I was just stopped there. Watching.”
Of course she was.
“I’m a curious person by nature. I didn’t even realize I was staring. But then they were really laying into him. Punching him really hard.”
“And?” Aubree perks up. “You were rubber necking. Then what?
“Well… I called out. I said, ‘hey,’to make them stop.” Her eyes fill with tears as she relives what she saw. “They shot him. It all kind of happened at the same time. So before I was done speaking, they shot him. He fell to the ground. The one in the front, the one called Vallejo, turned around. That’s when he saw me. And I saw him. Then all hell broke loose, and I started running. Because they were shooting at me and stuff.”
“And stuff.” I drop my head back to look at the ceiling.And stuffmeanstrying to kill her. “You’re fucking lucky you ran, Aurora. They weren’t playing around.”
“Really?” She sweetens her tone and smiles when I bring my eyes down. “I had no clue they were really,actuallymad at me, Detective Banks. In fact, I was considering inviting them over for dinner tonight. Ya know, since we’re all friends and such.”
She stares defiantly into my eyes and dares me to bite back. I could. It would be so easy to fight with her and ignore the rest of the world. But I peer at Malone instead and block her anger out. “What have you pulled on their whereabouts this week? Have you got CCTV of where these men went after they chased her?”
“We followed them for as long as cameras were picking them up. They left Lombardo’s body and ran in pursuit of the witness.” He spares a short glance for Rory before coming back to me. “Three men ran out of that alleyway, two of which have now been identified as Marcos Buchanan and Gavin Stevens. Tommy Enders came to play after the bounty was placed on the witness’s head, and is in police custody inside the hospital and apparently pretty skittish whenever anyone stops by his room. So, two of the three are in police custody and the third person from the alleyway is in the wind.”
“What about the fourth one?” Rory asks. “There was that last guy in the alleyway. I saw him.”
“We havenoCCTV footage of a fourth man,” Malone responds. “He didn’t exit the alleyway on either end that we were able to pick up on security, and no other witnesses have come forward to mention him.”
“There was a fourth man!” she blurts out, twisting in her seat to plead her case. “There was. I saw him.”
“We believe you,” Fletcher murmurs. “The fact the three others are in custody or missing, and still, men hunt you, proves to us there are more involved. And whoever the fourth is, he’s really invested in you not identifying him.”
“But I already did…” she murmurs shakily. “I already said, Lorenzo called him Vallejo.”
“Well…” Archer reaches up and carefully plays with the chain hung around his neck. It’s a passive action. Thoughtless, really. “Until today, Vallejo was officially dead, Rory. He was buried and in a box. Now,” he adds, twisting his lips, “I guess he’s alive again. And the fact he is, is causing us all a little trouble.”
“Start with the morgue,” I command, drawing the eyes of not only the cops, but the women who surround them. “It’s not standard practice to bury a man and attribute it to the wrong name. That means someone along the food chain was either too stupid to know he was autopsying the wrong body, or he was paid off. Find out who signed the checks and connect the dots that way.”
“We also have to figure out who the body is,” Mayet inserts. “Whatever else happens, we have an unidentified dead man. Figuring out who he is might help.”
“Let’s follow that up.” Archer stands, but looks down at Rory and softens his expression. “You’re doing good, Ms. Swanson. This is a high-pressure situation, and you’re holding your own just fine.”
“I learned how to shoot a gun today.” Slowly, oblivious to the look Archer sends my way, she pushes off her chair and takes a moment to stabilize herself. “I shot a bunch of times, and even hit the target once or twice.”
“You did?” Fletcher steps up on her right and grabs her arm the way I’m so used to doing. He helps her, completely and utterly platonic. But my eyes still narrow as he helps her out from between the chair and the desk. “You hit the targets? That’s pretty badass for a first time.”
“Well, I hit the paper,” she clarifies. “Not, like, on the printout of the body. So in real life, we’d call them all a miss.” Then she grins and extricates her arm from his grip. “I hit the bullseye on the guy next to me’s target though.”
Groaning, I drag my hand along my face and breathe through this entire clusterfuck of a week. “Men do not take kindly to that shit,” I tell them. “Hit a man’s target by accident, and you’ve got beef.”
