Chapter Twenty-Seven
Speaking of hell… Sam pulled into the parking lot at HQ, took note of the mob of reporters gathered outside the main entrance and went around to the morgue entrance. Thankfully, they didn’t see her and didn’t give chase.
She went in the door and ran into Lindsey McNamara standing in the hallway with her deputy, Byron Tomlinson. They went silent when they saw her coming.
“That’s okay,” Sam said. “I already know the whole place is talking about me. Don’t let me interrupt.”
“We were talking about our schedule for the week,” Lindsey said with a friendly smile for Sam. “We talked about you earlier.”
“I knew it!”
“You and Archelotta,” Tomlinson said with a dirty grin. “Gotta say I never suspected a thing.”
“I like to think I have some secrets,” Sam said, trying to be a good sport when she certainly had better things to do than dish about something that’d been over for years.
“I heard we found Ruby Denton,” Lindsey said, and Sam wanted to kiss her for changing the subject.
“You heard correctly.”
“How bad?”
“As bad as it gets,” Sam said.
Lindsey made a sympathetic sound. “That poor girl.”
“At least she’s alive. We don’t get many outcomes that end up with the victim alive in our line of work.”
Lindsey nodded in agreement. “That’s for sure.”
“I’ve got to get to it. See you later.”
“Bye, Sam.”
She went into the pit, where Cruz and Gonzo were working the phones while Carlucci and Dominguez typed on computers.
Sam didn’t interrupt them. Rather, she went into her office, gathered her notes and the reports from overnight and went into the conference room to begin mapping it all out on the big dry-erase board.
Beginning on the far left side with the threat received by Nick’s office, she worked her way across the board, adding information about Peter’s murder, the people they’d interviewed, the odd timing of tell-all interviews from Nicoletta and Peter before he died.
Using magnetic clips, she hung Peter’s autopsy photos while avoiding the temptation to study his litany of injuries once again.
A throat cleared behind her. She turned to find Archie standing in the doorway.
“Didn’t want to interrupt the master at work.”
“No worries. What’ve you got?”
He handed her a photograph that’d been taken from the security video outside Peter’s building. “Raul has identified this guy as Gibson’s new friend.”
“What do we know about him?”
“I ran him through facial recognition and got a name, Dante Fields. He’s in our system with a long list of priors.” Archie handed her a printout. “We also got a confirmation from Lucy Kaul that she saw Fields with Peter.”
Sam scanned the list of mostly misdemeanor counts ranging from assault to robbery.
“I took the liberty of running his financials.” He gave her another sheet that showed an individual on the brink of ruin. His bank balances were under ten dollars, and his outstanding debt was in the hundreds of thousands.
“He would’ve been ripe for the picking,” Sam said, her mind racing with the probability that he was the one who’d inflicted the torture on Peter.
Archie gave her a third sheet of paper. “Local address. I’ve already requested a warrant to search his house.”
“Great work, Archie. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“Where’s Raul now?”
“I gave him a choice of going home or spending some time in protective custody. He wavered until I showed him the photos of what’d been done to Gibson. He chose lockup.”
“That’s good. Appreciate you handling that.”
He handed her one more piece of paper. “A printout of Gibson’s interview.”
Sam looked down at it, conflicted by wanting to know what it said and not wanting to know. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this.”
“No need to apologize. You had nothing to do with it.”
“Well, I did make the monumental mistake of marrying him.”
Archie shrugged. “It’ll blow over when someone else does something that gets everyone talking.”
“You’re being a remarkably good sport about having your personal business broadcast to the world.”
“I’ve never been ashamed of the time we spent together, Sam. Why should I start now?”
“That’s very generous of you.”
“Besides,” he said with the charming grin that had attracted her in the first place, “I’m not the one who’s married. What does your husband think of the rumors?”
“He was surprised I never mentioned you to him and had a few things to say about that. I reminded him that he never provided a list of his exes either.”
“Good point,” Archie said, laughing. “Try not to worry. It’ll blow over in a day or two.”
“I hope you’re right. Thanks again for the help with the case.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” He waved as he left the room.
Sam forced herself to take a moment, to read what had been written about her with her ex-husband as the primary source of the information.
It rehashed their miscarriages as well as their acrimonious divorce and detailed her rebound fling with Archie.
If the point had been to humiliate her, mission accomplished.
But Peter would never have spoken willingly to the media about the miscarriages that had devastated him as much as they had her, which confirmed her theory that the details had been tortured out of him, and now she wanted to nail the guy who’d done it.
Sam went to the door and yelled for Cruz and Gonzo.
“You barked?” Cruz said when he came into the conference room.
Sam glared at him. “We’ve got a lead on Peter’s possible executioner.” She gave them the rundown on what Archie had gotten from Raul.
“Let’s go pick him up,” Gonzo said.
“I want full backup on this.” She picked up the phone that sat in the middle of the conference-room table, dialed Malone’s extension and asked him to come into the conference room.
“Be right there,” he said.
The captain arrived a few minutes later with Chief Farnsworth in tow.
“We may have a break in the Gibson case.” Thankful that no one mentioned the latest gossip, Sam updated them on the information Archie had provided and made her request for a coordinated effort to bring in Fields.
Malone picked up the phone and made a couple of calls that soon had the conference room full of SWAT and Tactical Response team members. Assistant US Attorney Faith Miller and Avery Hill joined them, as well. When everyone was in place, he gestured for Sam to brief the team.
She began with Peter’s autopsy photos, which she removed from the board to pass around, noting the way each officer reacted to what’d been done to him.
“We believe that Dante Fields is the one who tortured Peter Gibson to death. Furthermore, we suspect someone else hired him to do the job. We need to bring Fields in alive and get him to roll on the person who hired him. That’s the person we want.
I’m willing to deal with Fields to get to the bigger fish. ”
“What makes you think he was hired to do the job?” Faith asked.
Sam went over the information Archie had uncovered about Fields’s dire financial situation as well as his long list of priors.
“He’s a seasoned criminal with nothing to lose who struck up a friendship with Peter in the month before he was tortured to death.
Information that could’ve only come from Peter was used to threaten my family, along with the suspicious timing of the tell-all interview from Nick’s mother.
Peter also gave an interview that included information he never would’ve talked about if his life hadn’t been in danger.
It all adds up to something stinky in the nation’s capital. ”
“You think it’s all related,” Faith said.
“I do.” Sam took a moment to get her thoughts in order.
“Roll with me here for a minute.” She focused on Faith but spoke to the room at large.
Before she’d gotten together with Nick, the thought of her personal life crossing into her professional life would’ve appalled her.
Now it happened with appalling regularity, and she’d learned to live with that new reality.
“Ever since Nick became vice president, his popularity has soared, eclipsing that of every other public figure in the country, this despite the fact that many people feel that he shouldn’t have the power he does, a heartbeat from the presidency, without having been elected.
So while he enjoys an extraordinary approval rating, there’s a small but vocal faction of the electorate that despises him.
The Secret Service has reported an uptick in credible threats against him.
” Sam swallowed hard. “Despite his popularity, Nick has received twice as many death threats as former vice president Gooding had by this time last year.”
“I had no idea,” Farnsworth said, seeming truly amazed. “It seems like the whole country is captivated by the two of you.”
“I believe that captivation is feeding the frenzy of whoever is behind this.” Sam went over to the board and pointed to the far left side where she’d recorded the threat against their family.
“One word stood out in the letter that Nick’s office received.
Humility.” It still pained her that it hadn’t occurred to her right away that there might be a connection to Peter.
Perhaps if she’d put that together sooner…
No. Don’t go there. No sense trying to rewrite history.
“My ex-husband used to tell me all the time that I needed to get some. I didn’t immediately put that together, but once I did, it led directly to him, which I believe was the intent. ”
Faith held up a hand to stop her. “You think one word in the threat letter your husband’s office received was intended to turn the focus on Peter Gibson?”
“Yes, I do. I believe they wanted us to find his dead body. I don’t believe they intended to have to torture him to get the information they needed.”
“What do you mean?” Avery asked.