Chapter Sixteen #2
Getting way too close to the dead dude, Gene sniffed the man, and he looked confused. It wasn’t as disgusting as he thought it was going to be.
In fact, it was familiar.
“Why does he smell like cotton candy?” he asked. “Or kettle corn?”
Ethan looked at him.
“Really?” he asked.
Oh, he knew they had sugar residue on the victims, but that had to be a lot of sugar to be that sweet-smelling. Cotton candy was literally spun sugar.
He pointed.
“Am I crazy? Or does he smell like it?” Gene asked, and now, they had three more men sniffing a body like it was a competition.
And of course, people were staring—mostly the techs.
“Yeah, it smells like it,” Greyson said. “Now, I’ll add this to the list of shit I’ll never eat again.”
Yeah, Gene too.
Ben was to the point.
“He’s sticky. I’m going to roll him, and you can feel his skin.”
Immediately, Lucas touched his arm, and he wasn’t gloved up.
Ben gasped.
“WITH GLOVES ON!”
He blushed.
“I’m sorry. I don’t do murders. I don’t have to wear gloves often when handling drugs and guns.”
What?
All three Feds stared at him, but opted not to go there. Sometimes, you had to choose your battles.
Instead, Gene shook his head, and handed the man a spare pair of gloves from his pocket.
“The Doc here is going to have to make sure he marks the area so the techs know your DNA might be on him,” he said.
And as he said it, the man did just that with a Sharpie. It was circling one of the symbols on him.
“Well, the good news,” Ben said, as he rolled him over, and his body was more like a blob full of broken bones, “is that now I can get an accurate trace. He’s not been washed off by the ocean.”
Gene grinned.
“We might get something that will help me solve this,” he admitted.
Well, that was a break for them. The killer changing patterns might actually help them.
“Give me a few hours, and I’ll have him autopsied and his tox done. You should go talk to his wife. She’s making a spectacle as she calls her husband a piece of shit. Her words, not mine,” he said, laughing.
Well, it looked like they were on interview duty.
Only, before they could head over, Gene glanced over at Greyson, and they could tell he wanted to talk. He was quiet, and he was staring at them.
Gene could read a room—err a front yard.
“Lucas, can you stick with the doc, and head in with the body?” he asked. “You’re on shift, right?”
He nodded.
“Yeah, do you want me to do some research? I can work on getting you a list of people he worked with that might know what went down.”
That would help.
“Normally, Corbin would be doing our research, so yeah, thanks. Find one of us if you find anything!” Gene said. “We have information on a whiteboard in the office.”
The man wasn’t sure who Corbin was, but he just stuck by the doctor as they walked away.
Not far from the freaking out wife, they found a private spot of the yard.
“What’s up?”
He kept his voice low.
“The mob is back into play on this. I got a name for you,” he offered, passing them a piece of paper with a name on it. “This came right from Gabe.”
Ethan opened it.
‘Rodrigo Cruz.’
“He’s the new mob entity here, but so far, he’s quiet. No one has any intel, other than his name.”
Ethan showed Gene the name.
“There’s not much to find on him, except he’s a local businessman. You’ll need to get caught up on him if he is involved. That would definitely fit.”
Oh, this was good.
It still made more sense to Gene that it was a mob hit than not. The pieces fit, and when those pieces fit, you had to let them fall into place.
“Thanks. We appreciate it.”
Greyson kept his voice low.
“That’s the good news, and never in my life did I think the mob would be the positive in a scenario.”
Uh-oh.
That didn’t sound good.
“Spill it,” Gene said.
He did.
“Gabe is onto you. I have proof. He basically came right out and asked me what I would do if I knew my agents were lying to me. It wasn’t verbatim, but he was setting my ass up to lie to him.”
Oh, shit.
“And that’s problematic,” Ethan said. “We’re burned, aren’t we?”
Greyson nodded.
It appeared so.
And that was bad for everyone involved. If Greyson covered for them, his ass was in the fire, too.
So, of course, he was going to cover for them. They were a team, and you never left your team behind.
PERIOD.
Keeping his voice low, he continued.
“He asked if you arrived on your flight today. I escaped answering it, which brought up the other line of questioning. We have to get ready. He’s about to drop the hammer on all of us. He also wanted me to work here and take this office.”
Gene lifted a brow.
“And are you?”
He shook his head.
“And have to retrain the agents here? The dude literally raw-dogged a victim with his bare hand. You can’t fix stupid. I don’t need that in my life.”
Gene laughed.
“I mean, in my circle, that is NOT what rawdogging means, but okay.”
Ethan just laughed.
“He’s actually right.”
Yeah, because he’d been rawdogging him not that long ago, and he had the cum on him to prove it.
“Well, I don’t want to train anyone. I’m getting too old.”
They both stared at him.
“You’re thirty-three,” Gene said. “Hardly geriatric, grandpa.”
He snorted.
“I’m not getting saddled with a training job because then, you never escape it. Hell. I’d rather run roughshod over you two before I have to deal with that.”
That said a lot.
They made him work for it.
“Since Gabe is leaning on us, I’m running Sasha, or whatever her fucking name is. If we can figure out what she’s done, and why Gabe is covering for her, we have leverage. BIG leverage. That will buy us a little time before he can regroup, or he has the big one and is no longer our issue.”
On that, they agreed.
“How’s that going?” Ethan asked. “The finding information, not wishing ‘the big one’ on Gabe.”
He was to the point.
“I’m running facial recognition. If she’s ever been in a newspaper article, or arrested, we’re good. I’m also going to run her through passports. She’s a doctor somewhere—or was. I’ll go international if need be.”
This was getting trickier for all of them involved, and annoying since they’d never done anything to ‘Sasha’ to make her rat them out like the weasel SNITCH she was.
Greyson looked at his watch.
“Have you heard from your tail?” he asked.
Oh, they knew who he was talking about, but he needed to make sure.
“Corbin?” Gene asked, clarifying.
He nodded.
“Last we heard, he and Will were going to go spend some time together,” Gene said. “He’s going to try and get it up by getting his man off.”
Greyson kept his voice low.
“Is he still struggling?” he asked.
They both nodded.
“He’s not even touching his man,” Gene said, “so he’s going to try that in hopes it gets him back on the horse,” he admitted.
Normally, Gene wouldn’t say anything to anyone about someone’s sex life, but Corbin had said something to Greyson a few times.
It wasn’t like the man wasn’t aware. Corbin brought it up often, and he trusted his friends to catch him when he needed it.
He had an inner support circle, and they were it. They were his family and friends, and they loved him.
“Well, I hope that works out. At least he’s not wandering around acting a fool in the streets.”
That was the truth.
No one needed that.
NO.
ONE.
They didn’t have time to wrangle Corbin on top of this case, and trying to salvage their vacation. They’d lost a day because of it.
“I’m heading back, since you have everything under control here. I will say that the Feds on first shift hauled ass out of there this afternoon. Can you imagine leaving before two?”
Was he serious?
“In the afternoon?” Gene asked, laughing. “No. Maybe two in the morning.”
Yeah, exactly.
“They were going out for drinks at two in the afternoon and actually invited me. Who does that?”
Ethan raised his hand.
“That was my plan on my vacation. It was to get him drunk and disorderly,” he admitted. “We all see how this went down.”
Gene grinned.
“He’s good at plans. Only, now I’m just disorderly, and your problem, Grey, not his.”
Greyson just laughed.
Then, he patted them both on the back, and planned to catch a ride back to the office with the ME and agent.
“Don’t be fools either. Watch your backs. This killer is changing it up, and you guys are working the case—so he or she will know what’s going on.”
Yeah, they were aware.
Both of them were being very cognizant of anyone near them, and making a misstep.
As their friend left, they knew what was next, and it was always the worst part of a killing.
Talking to the family.
Normally, they’d have to find the loved ones, but this killer had been oh-so-kind by dumping the body close to home.
As they approached, she was off her phone as she watched the ME near her husband.
There was mascara running down her face, and she looked like she’d been dragged out of bed to find this and then freaked the fuck out.
Well, that fit.
“Mrs. Padilla?” Gene asked.
It took her a second, but she turned her head and stared at them.
“It’s Margie, and before you ask, yes, I feel bad but then I feel like he had that shit coming,” the Puerto Rican woman said, pointing at her dead husband—with her middle finger.
Oh, boy.
This was going to be spicy.
She continued.
“He was out being an asshole last night. He called me after ten, and said he was coming home. He went for drinks with ‘friends’.”
Ethan was making notes, but he could hear the anger in her voice. There was no love lost there.
“How much do you want to bet those ‘friends’ had vaginas?” she asked.
The two men shook their heads.
No one was taking that bet. The wife ALWAYS knew when the husband was doing her dirty.
ALWAYS.
“Do you know where?” Gene asked, thinking they would have to hit that place up.
Oh, she did.
Margie pulled a handful of papers out of her pocket, and handed them to them.
“I printed out his credit card receipts,” she said. “In real time so I would know what he was doing. So each drink he bought was for some floozy, I know it.”
Oh, boy.
Gene took the papers.