Chapter Thirteen #2
“There’ll be rage, too. After Steven was killed, I didn’t feel comfortable around my own wife for weeks because I was so afraid I might lose control of the rage.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t, but it was one hell of a fight not to. As hard as it’ll be today and tomorrow and next week and the week after that, you’ll get through this, and you’ll get your people through it, too.”
His confidence in her gave her a badly needed boost. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Anytime, baby girl. Take care of you in all of this, you hear me? You’ve been through a tough time, and you need to ease back in.”
“The fire in the belly is back.”
“That’s good to hear, although I’m sorry it took such an awful tragedy.”
“So am I.”
“Call me later. Let me know how you’re doing, and give my love to the squad and Gonzo in particular.”
“I will. Thanks again.” She’d no sooner ended the call with her dad when the phone rang. “Holland.”
“It’s me.” Freddie.
“Hey. You’ve heard?”
“Yeah, last night. We’re on the way back from Florida now. I’ll be at HQ soon. Where are you?”
“Almost there myself.”
“Oh, good. That’s good. Sam…”
The despair was apparent in every word he said. “I know. I know.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
She pulled into the parking lot at HQ, which was filled with trucks from TV stations with big satellite dishes on top, and drove around to the morgue entrance. Thankfully, the reporters didn’t recognize her in the new car and never gave her a second glance as she darted inside.
Her first stop was the morgue itself, where Detective Tyrone was standing watch outside the lab. His chin quivered at the sight of her. Sam hugged him for a long moment and then went into the lab where Lindsey McNamara was finishing up the exam on Arnold with a CSU detective standing by.
Sam forced herself to look at the damaged face of the handsome young man who’d reported to her for the last year. She made herself look at the hole in his face that the bullet had left behind.
“Sam,” Lindsey said. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
“Why not? He’s mine. The least I can do for him is to be here with him.” She reached out to touch his hair, the one part of him unchanged by death. “Was it fast?”
“I believe he died almost instantly.”
“So he didn’t know what was happening?”
“I can’t say for sure, but the bullet pierced his brain. If he knew, it was barely an instant before he lost consciousness.”
“Helps to know he didn’t suffer.”
“Gonzo on the other hand…”
“I talked to him.”
“Then you know he’s blaming himself.”
Sam nodded.
“Are you back to work?”
“As of today.”
“It’s good to have you back, but I hate the circumstances.”
“So do I.” Sam ran her hand over Arnold’s hair again before pulling her hand back and jamming it into her pocket. “Did you get anything we can use?”
“I was able to retrieve the 9 millimeter bullet. I’ve sent it out for ballistics testing. But there wasn’t much else to be gotten.”
“That’s something anyway. Keep me posted on what you hear from the lab.”
“I will.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“If there’s anything I can do, Sam, anything at all, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Appreciate it.” Taking the images of Arnold’s wounded face with her, Sam left the morgue and headed for the pit, ignoring the stares and curiosity from colleagues she encountered along the way.
Other than her meetings with Trulo, she hadn’t been here in weeks, and people were naturally curious about what’d happened between her and Stahl in that basement.
They were curious about her new role as the vice president’s wife and the celebrity status that went along with it, not that she cared about that.
It was more of a nuisance than anything else, at least in her opinion.
They could have their curiosity. She would never speak of what happened between her and Stahl again, except for at his trial.
There she would gladly convey the gory details of what’d happened that day—and the day he’d attacked her on her own doorstep—if it meant putting him away for life.
He was facing hard time in a federal prison where the inmates wouldn’t take kindly to a cop in their ranks.
If it was petty to hope that Stahl might be on the receiving end of some jailhouse justice, then she was happy to be called petty.
After the way he’d tortured and beat her, it was the least of what he deserved.
She entered the pit, which was unusually quiet.
Jeannie McBride looked up from her computer, saw Sam and got up to hug her. “Thank God you’re here.”
Never one to easily accept overt displays of affection, Sam returned Jeannie’s hug because she needed the comfort as much as her detective and friend did. “How’s everyone doing?”
“Shock. Disbelief. Anger. More disbelief.”
“What’ve we got on the shooter?”
“Come into the conference room, and I’ll show you.”
Sam followed Jeannie into the room where Avery Hill was updating the murder board.
“Lieutenant,” he said, seeming surprised by her arrival. “Good to see you, but I’m sorry about the reason. I had a lot of admiration for Detective Arnold. He was a huge help to me during the Patterson case.”
“Thank you. He was showing a lot of potential. Tell me what we have so far and how I can help.”
McBride and Hill went through the events of the previous day, including what Gonzo and Arnold had learned from William Enright and his colleague at Griffen + Smoltz.
“Have we established any other connections to Besozzi among the other knife attack victims?” Sam asked.
“Not yet,” Jeannie replied, “but we’re digging deeper on all of them today.”
“What about Besozzi himself? What do we know?”
“Not much of anything, oddly enough,” Hill said. “He doesn’t exist anywhere in the system, which tells us only that he hasn’t been arrested or detained under that name. It doesn’t tell us if that’s who he is.”
“Do we have reason to suspect he might be operating under an assumed name?”
“We have more of a hunch,” Jeannie said, “by one of Enright’s colleagues who’d thought the accent seemed fake.”
“Let’s talk to the colleague today, and see if he can tell us more about why he thought so. See if they can get us a photo of him before the press briefing.”
“We’re working on the photo.” Jeannie took a note, adding Sam’s suggestion about the coworker to a long list on the pad in front of her.
“The guy is passing himself off as an Italian citizen, correct?” Sam asked.
“That’s right,” Hill said.
“Can you reach out to the Italian embassy to see if they can help us to determine whether someone of that name is currently in the U.S.?”
“I’ll get right on that,” Hill said.
“I want to see everything we’ve got so far in this investigation,” Sam said, “and I want this guy’s head on a fucking platter.”