29. Flowers
Flowers
ANDY
Everyone on the block came to say goodbye to Gus.
I recognized most of the faces. The old man who watered his lawn at six every evening. The couple from the vintage shop on the corner. Regulars I'd seen at the counter, in the booth by the window, on the sidewalk out front on warm nights when Gus left the door open and the music carried.
Gus's kids had flown in. All three of them.
His son, his two daughters, their families.
His youngest had booked a flight from London the night she got the call.
Gus had introduced us at Christmas, and they were exactly how I'd imagined them.
Warm, easy with each other, proud of their father in a way that made him pretend to be embarrassed.
He talked about them so much I felt like I'd known them long before I shook their hands.
He kept their photos behind the register next to Birdie's, and every holiday they came home to him because they wanted to.
Selena was in the front row, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. Terrence was beside her with his glasses off and his eyes swollen. Jeremy sat in the second row with the crew, Travis quiet for once.
"Every time we came home to visit, Dad would introduce us to someone new.
" Gus's son stood at the front. His voice was steady but his hands weren't. "'This is my boy,' he'd say.
It didn't matter that I was forty. He'd walk us around the bar like we'd never been there and tell us about every single person in the room.
" He paused. "We used to ask him to come live near us in New York, Chicago, or London.
He always said the same thing. 'My people are here. '"
Daphne was inconsolable. Her face was swollen, her eyes red, her whole body folded into whoever was nearest. She hugged Terrence and he held her.
The flowers that decorated the room were from her shop.
They were the same ones she'd been bringing to Gus's every week for as long as I'd known her. Now they were on his casket.
Wyatt held my hand the whole time.
After Zeus took over the scene, Jeremy and I drove to the firehouse.
Wyatt saw me from the bay and walked straight to me and held me without saying a word.
We sat with the crew for almost an hour.
Nobody talked. Knox made coffee that nobody drank.
Travis sat on the bumper of the engine with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
Knox was the first to break the silence.
"What's going to happen now?"
"Zeus Alexander is leading the investigation," I said. "He's the best detective in the department. If anyone's going to make sense of what happened, it's him."
Knox nodded. "You should tell him about Lockwood Development. They've been coming around trying to get Gus to sell the space."
I looked at Wyatt.
Knox answered before he could. "He didn't want to involve you. Said you were police and it wasn't your problem to deal with."
"How long has that been going on?"
"Months. Gus told them no every time but they kept coming back."
A development company pressuring a bar owner who just got killed in his own bar. That wasn't nothing.
"I'll pass it along."
Travis looked up. "Make sure they don't just close the file, Walsh."
I couldn't promise him that. I was a patrol officer. The case wasn't mine. I didn't have the authority. But the whole crew was looking at me, and I couldn't say no. I looked at Jeremy. Then back at Travis and nodded.
Wyatt squeezed my hand.
He was squeezing it the same way now, sitting beside me at the funeral. I rested my head on his shoulder and he leaned into me.
"I hope we made you as proud as you made us, Dad."
Gus's son pressed his lips together and stepped back from the front. He rested his hand on the casket as he passed it, just for a moment, before sitting down with his sisters.
I went back to work the day after the funeral. I'd already passed Knox's tip about Lockwood Development to Zeus, but something about the case wouldn't leave me alone. I didn't know what it was. I just knew it didn't sit right.
"Andy." Doug stopped by my desk during shift change. "I heard about the bar. I'm sorry."
"Thanks, Doug."
I never talked about my personal life at work. Doug and Jeremy were the only ones at the precinct who knew about Wyatt and me.
He put his hand on top of my shoulder. "If you need to talk, I'm here."
"I know. Thank you."
Doug gave my shoulder a pat before he walked into the briefing room.
The victim files from the bar shooting were still on my desk. Zeus had the case, but I'd been the responding officer, and the supplementals were mine to file.
I opened the folder. The two shooters had been identified as Gino Stasio and Jensen Alridge.
I stared at the name.
Gino Stasio. I knew that name. Jeremy and I had been talking about him in the car the day of the shooting. He was one of the burglary victims. Now Stasio was dead on the floor of Gus's bar.
I pulled up the burglary files.
Stasio. McCarthy. Lockwood.
Three homes. Nothing stolen from any of them. And one of the homeowners was found dead on the floor of Gus's bar.
The third name stopped me. Preston Lockwood. The heir to Lockwood Development. The company Knox told me had been pressuring Gus to sell the bar.
I pulled the autopsy report. Stasio was carrying a nine-millimeter. Alridge had a forty-five. Alridge's gun killed Stasio and Gus. Stasio's gun killed Alridge.
If Stasio and Alridge came to the bar together to intimidate Gus on behalf of Lockwood Development, they wouldn't have shot each other.
So what was Alridge doing there? Was he working alone? And how did Lockwood connect to any of this?
I went back to Lockwood's file. A few weeks ago, Jeremy and I had responded to a monitored alarm at his house. We caught Mitchell Dunne inside.
Did Dunne have a connection to any of this?
I ran the three names: Stasio, McCarthy, and Lockwood, against criminal records, public filings, known associates, and found that they were indeed connected.
Same social circles, same network, overlapping business records.
The same search flagged two more names linked to the group: Ben Mendelson and Cyril Puno.
Mendelson's death was made to look like a suicide. He was found dead on his living room floor with a note that was torn from a spiral notebook which did not match any of the stationery he had at the apartment.
Puno was found at the bottom of a stairwell in his building with a wound on the back of his skull instead of the front where the wound should have been if he'd actually fallen down those stairs.
Five men. All connected. Three dead: Mendelson, Puno, Stasio. Two still alive: McCarthy and Lockwood.
What was the connection, if there was any, between Dunne and Alridge? Why did Alridge kill Gus if not for Lockwood Development?
I didn't have enough to answer that. But I had enough to know this was bigger than anyone thought.
I gathered every file and walked it to Zeus Alexander's office.
Zeus had Dunne transported from Clark County Detention Center to the precinct. Within the hour, he was in an interrogation room.
I stood behind the glass. Zeus sat across from Dunne and his lawyer and laid out what I'd brought him. Three burglaries with the same signature. Dunne's prints in all three homes. Those three men connected to two more men who were both dead.
Dunne's lawyer leaned in and whispered something. Dunne stared at the table.
Zeus leaned back. "Counselor, your client's prints are in the homes of men who are being murdered. I've got three bodies, a pattern, and one man who was inside. If your client has something to say, now is the time."
Dunne talked after his lawyer secured a proffer agreement with the DA's office.
He confessed to all five jobs: Mendelson, Stasio, Puno, McCarthy, and Lockwood.
I'd only known about three. Mendelson's break-in had been handled by a different patrol team.
He never made it inside Puno's apartment.
Puno arrived just as Dunne was about to enter.
Dunne panicked, landed a blow to the back of Puno's head, and staged his death to look like he'd fallen down the stairs.
"I didn't kill Mendelson. That was done by an accomplice. Jensen Alridge."
The other man from the bar.
"My job was to break into their homes, gather intelligence, and intimidate them." Dunne shifted in his seat. "I was working for a woman named Daphne Alistair. She runs the flower shop off West Ashmont."
The ground shifted under me.
Daphne.
The woman who ran the shop where Birdie bought bouquets. The woman who gave me a flower when we first met. The woman who brought flowers to Gus's bar every week. The woman who was inconsolable at his funeral.
Daphne was the woman responsible for Gus's death.
"And what was Ms. Alistair's motive for organizing all of this?"
"Those five men drugged, raped, and killed her sister. Her name was Sydney."
Dunne rubbed his face with both hands.
"Sydney moved to Las Vegas to work. She wanted to be a flight attendant. She was saving money, building her resume in hospitality. She and Daphne talked every few weeks. When Sydney started missing calls, Daphne chalked it up to work at first. Sydney tended to go quiet when things got busy.
"But weeks passed. No texts, no calls, nothing.
Daphne flew to Las Vegas. Sydney's landlord told her the apartment was empty.
He'd assumed Sydney had skipped on the lease, so he packed her things into a box.
Her manager said she'd stopped showing up for shifts weeks ago.
Nobody knew where she was. Daphne filed a missing person's report. It went nowhere.
"She couldn't accept that her sister had just disappeared. So she called Alridge. He'd been in love with Sydney for years. Daphne trusted that he'd do whatever it took to help her find out what happened. They found out. But by the time they did, it was too late. Sydney was already dead."
Zeus shook his head. He was still for a moment. Then he closed his folder, stood, and thanked Dunne and his lawyer for their cooperation.
He stepped out and found me behind the glass.
"I'm going to arrange an arrest warrant for Daphne Alistair tonight. Two of her targets are still alive. We can't sit on this."
He looked at me.
"Walsh, when the warrant comes through, it's yours."