Chapter 40
Vaughn was thoroughly spent. After dropping Ivy off, he’d gone back to the crime scene. Relieved Delaney.
They’d found an identical canister of gas. Remote switch. Router. Speaker. The victim was a man in his mid-thirties.
Vaughn didn’t get home until close to three in the morning. Dr. Button was destined to have a longer night still.
The fuzzy feelings that had come over him following his drinks with Ivy faded.
They were long gone the next morning when he arrived at Darnell’s house forty-five minutes later than he told his partner to be ready, and the man still wasn’t answering his phone.
He knocked heavily on the door, shouted Darnell’s name. Didn’t bother checking to see if it was locked.
Vaughn wasn’t in the mood to rouse his partner, nor clean up the man’s shit. This shtick was getting old.
He knocked again.
“Darnell! Time to go!”
He heard movement from inside.
Satisfied that he’d done his part, Vaughn got back in the car and waited. Gave Darnell fifteen minutes—if he didn’t come out by then, he’d go into the precinct by himself.
Darnell emerged at the thirteen minute mark.
The man groaned as he got in the car.
“No coffee this morning?”
Vaughn said nothing as he pulled onto the road.
“You look like shit, by the way.”
That did it.
Vaughn was fed up.
Maybe it was what Delaney had said about Darnell holding him back. Maybe it was the cumulative effects of dealing with the man’s shit for months now.
“I look like shit? Me? You smell like a distillery.”
Darnell sniffed his armpits.
“Ran out of deodorant.”
Typically, these types of jokes would tickle Vaughn.
Not today.
“Where the fuck were you last night?”
“At home. My blind date stood me up.”
“Darnell, there was another murder.”
This finally slapped the smile of his partner’s face.
“What?”
As he drove, Vaughn briefly outlined what had happened, leaving Ivy out of his account.
“Jesus Christ, man, why didn’t you come get me?”
“I’m not your babysitter.”
“Fuck. I’m your goddamn superior, Ryan. Don’t you forget that.”
Vaughn’s eyes flashed to his partner. He was about to say something, something he couldn’t take back. And Darnell seemed to be daring him to do it. His eyes were bloodshot. The pupils pinpricks.
But there was a deep sadness in them too, hidden beneath a thin veneer of anger.
Vaughn looked away.
“Let’s just find this fucking guy.”
Delaney wasn’t in the bullpen. Vaughn and Darnell had missed the morning briefing, which wasn’t terribly uncommon while working a case. The whiteboard on the back wall was filled with manic scribblings.
Vaughn recognized Captain Daniels’s terrible writing.
This was a little odd. Captain Daniels rarely attended these meetings, leaving Lieutenant Carlo to run the briefings.
Vaughn found Bowes tucked into the corner of the room, a half dozen cell phones in front of him, a laptop open. The man had headphones on and didn’t notice either Vaughn or Darnell.
“Bowes? You seen Delaney?” Vaughn asked.
The man was bobbing his head to a song that Vaughn recognized when he got closer.
“Save Me,” by Jelly Roll.
Vaughn reached out and pulled one of the headphone cups off his ear.
“Oh—hey. Captain was in this morning.” He hadn’t heard Vaughn’s question. “Looked pissed.”
“Why?”
Bowes shrugged.
It was barely nine, and there were already two energy drinks—Ghost and C4 this time, both open—on his desk.
“Dunno. I was just going through the phones that Delaney brought in. And—”
“Phones?” Darnell asked.
“Yeah. He found two more, one in each of the cars at the pizza joint. Belong to, uh,” Bowes’s eyes flicked to his screen, “Thomas Altman and Geoff Lane.”
The names meant nothing to Vaughn, but he assumed that they were two of the first ten victims. Likely the two that Aaron had shared his final slice of pizza with.
“And?” Darnell said.
“And they all got the same text messages, the ones with the rules.”
Made sense; their cars were parked at CiCi’s Pizza.
“Where is Delaney, anyway?”
“Haven’t seen him. But I don’t think he clocked out last night.”
“Really? I sent him home after—”
The bullpen door opened.
“Sacker, Ryan, my office.”
It was Captain Daniels, and Bowes was right. He did look pissed. The PPD Captain was in his sixties, but on any given day, he could have passed as eighty or fifty. Hard eyes, thick gray, almost white hair. Built like a slab of granite. Today, he was eighty.
“Bowes, you working the gas case with them?”
“He’s helping with the tech,” Vaughn offered.
“You too, then. In my office, now.”