WHEN THE MUSIC DIES (MUSIC CITY MURDERS Book 1) (2 page)

“No—but you’ll do.”

She never saw the blade.

Nashville, Tennessee

April 14, 2003

Monday Morning

Nine Years Later

Metro Homicide Detectives Mike Neal and Norm Wallace were sitting in the empty retail parking lot gulping down a hasty breakfast and trying to come to grips with facing another day on the back of two hours sleep. They worked into the early morning investigating a murder outside the Sandstone Apartments in the southern part of the city. Two hours and a shower was not a fair exchange for normality, but then what was normal anymore?

Both detectives jerked their heads from side to side, attempting to locate the source of the screaming tires as the sound wrapped around their cruiser. From the passenger’s seat, Mike caught sight of the multi-colored clunker in his peripheral vision as it bucked to a smoking stop.

A man tumbled from the driver’s seat and wobbled toward their car. Mike could see he was unkempt. He appeared to be unarmed and from the looks of him, recently unconscious. Mike’s reflexes caused him to react from the sound of the man’s dirty hands slapping hard against the passenger side window.

“Damn,” Norm mumbled through a mouthful of bagel. He fumbled the white paper around his breakfast, and a glob of warm cream cheese oozed from his bagel and landed on his sport jacket.

“Shit.”

Gravity had already begun to lengthen the oily mess by the time he retrieved the lid to his coffee cup and scraped the glob from his stained lapel.

Outside, the agitated man yelled an obscure threat that sprayed his anger in spittle across the car’s side window. His face was contorted and his hair tousled, but Mike thought he looked familiar.

“Wha tar you doing?” The English portion of the Latino’s mixed-language rant was at last understandable.

Mike recognized Gabriel Sanchez from the homicide he and Norm worked last night. He was the young victim’s older brother.

“This jerk’s attitude needs a tune up,” Norm said, as he yanked his door handle.

Mike parked his half-eaten yogurt on the opened lid to the glove compartment. He threw his notepad on the dash and kicked open his door, driving Sanchez backward and causing him to fall.

At thirty-seven, Mike Neal was six feet tall and just under two hundred extra-lean pounds. His light brown hair was maybe a half inch longer than his 1990’s Army buzz. He’d been told that when he smiled he looked like John Bon Jovi after a four dollar haircut. He wasn’t sure it was meant as a compliment.

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Sanchez?” Mike yelled as he stood over the scruffy man.

Sanchez lurched to his feet.

“Wha tar you two doing sitting in your damn car? You are supposed to be looking for the gang-banging bastards who killed Tony.” His wide-eyed stare exposed a thousand tiny blood vessels that confirmed to Mike—Sanchez was drunk.

Sanchez made these same expectations clear to the detectives late last night at the Davidson County morgue after identifying the body of his brother Anthony, dead at eighteen. Tony was robbed and shot while delivering for Pauletti’s Pizza.

“Sanchez,” Norm said, “we’re all trying to find your brother’s killer, but Tony’s murder isn’t the only homicide in Nashville this week. We have other distraught families with murders that also have to be investigated. You need to chill out before you get
your
ass in trouble.”

“I don’t give a damn about nobody else’s problems. I want you two looking for
Tony’s
killers. Don’t you understand?” he screamed then clenched his teeth as he lunged at Mike.

Mike side-stepped and pushed him away. Sanchez stumbled, caught his balance and then took a swing at Mike. Mike blocked the weak attempt with his left forearm as he grabbed Sanchez’s shirt and rotated him so he could get behind him and gain control of his arms. Norm reached for his cuffs and stepped forward, but Mike’s compassion caused him to shake his head. Norm backed off.

“Calm down, Sanchez,” Mike said. “You’re not helping Tony, or yourself.”

As Mike continued to restrain him, he could tell by the stench from Sanchez’s clothing and his breath, he’d consumed more than his share of beer and tequila since last night’s incident.

“It is too late to help Tony, thanks to you cops. If you had locked up the gang-banging bastards, Tony would still be alive. Now, let me go. Let—me—go!” He jerked his arms, attempting to free himself.

Mike pushed Sanchez away. He stumbled, turned and swung wildly at Mike again. Mike grabbed his wrist mid-swing, twisted it and then moved behind him once more. Irritated with Sanchez’s attempts to fight, he locked him in a rear-naked choke hold, a hold he’d performed countless times during hand-to-hand combat training and afterward while serving with the Army Criminal Investigations Command. The maneuver was designed to restrict blood flow to the brain if maintained for a few seconds. It began to render Sanchez powerless.

Norm came closer to help.

“He’s done,” Mike said, squinting in response to Sanchez’s disgusting odor.

As Sanchez’s resistance waned, Mike released the hold and eased him down to the pavement next to their car. He rubbed Sanchez’s neck to stimulate his return to awareness.

“Grab a blanket,” Mike said.

Norm pulled a blanket from the trunk, rolled and placed it under Sanchez’s head.

“Gabriel, you’ll need to lie still for a while,” Mike said, happy the man was now quiet.

Some locals had gathered near the cars. Witnessing the confrontation, they offered their bold judgment on how the situation was being handled by the detectives.

“Man, you kill dat dude,” one of the young men shouted, then laughed. “See—you done choked him. Damn.”

“He looked dead to me, already,” The other teenager said. “Call Five-O.” They both laughed, then gave each other a high five.

Steamed by the free-flowing criticism, Norm walked over to the young men announcing, “Okay, it’s time to move on.”

Most of the group turned, mumbled, and walked away, but a couple of them just stared at Norm.

“Wha? Chu gonna choke us too?”

“I suggest—you take this opportunity to leave,” Norm said as professionally as he could.

“Zat a threat?”

Norm’s eyes opened wide as he gave each of them his most intimidating stare. He took a deep breath. “I don't make threats—I predict the future.”

Norm glanced back at Mike, who rolled his eyes knowing well what was coming. Norm stepped closer to the two and leaned his large frame forward.

“If you don't leave—right now,” Norm put his fingertips to his temple, squinted and spoke slowly, “in the future ... I see you ... lying there,” Norm pointed to the pavement, “in handcuffs ... looking up at me through black eyes with multiple lacerations and colorful contusions. And, I see me ... looking down at you ... wondering why you didn't leave when you had the damn chance. Do you understand, or do I have to use
body
language?”

“Chill out, Po Po. We out-a-here.” The twosome offered their confident swagger as proof of their machismo.

Norm watched them walk away then returned to Mike and Sanchez.

“I called for EMS to check Sanchez and patrol to take him and his car back home,” Mike said.

Sanchez, finally docile, sat leaning against the Crown Vic. He batted his eyes, still clearing away the stupor.

In minutes, the medical techs arrived and checked his vitals. Sanchez appeared to have regained some self-control.

“Detective,” Sanchez said to Mike, in a calmer tone. “Remember what I told you last night. The family of the man who died in that bar fight in Escondido got their justice when I was sent away. I paid my dues. Now it’s
my
turn. You people find these thugs and get me my justice, or I
will
do it myself.”

“You’re making some damn poor decisions, Sanchez,” Norm spoke up. “You might want to rethink that one.”

“Then do your damn jobs, so I don’t have to,” Sanchez shouted. “I promised my mother when I brought her and Tony to Nashville that the move would save him from the same San Diego gang-hell that cost me seven years of my life. Now I got to face her every day, both of us knowing I failed, again. I don’t care any more.”

“Give us a chance,” Mike said. “We’ll find them.”

“You’d better,” he demanded.

Mike and Norm left Sanchez with the EMTs and returned to their car.

As soon as he fell into the driver’s seat, Norm jerked down the visor mirror and craned his neck to inspect the stain on his lapel. “Do you know how hard it is to find a decent Fifty-Four Extra Long sport jacket? Cheryl is gonna shoot me for sure.”

Mike leaned forward to grab his notepad off the dash. He looked at the dark spot on Norm’s lapel and said, “And you’ve given her a target, right over your heart.”

Six feet-four, three hundred and fifteen pounds; the only thing slight about Norm was his level of patience. At forty-eight, Norm wasn’t anywhere near his partner’s physical conditioning. But then who was? Each fall, Norm made sure he was able to meet the department’s minimum physical training requirements. That was good enough for him.

Norm flipped up the visor. “Do you ever want to knock the hell out of somebody when they go off on you like Sanchez? I don’t see how you keep from it.”

Mike smiled. “No, not really. I remember how I felt after my sister Connie was killed in ’94.” Mike hesitated. “When I flew home from Iraq, I was crazy too—almost like Sanchez. All I knew was somebody had to pay for my sister’s death. I wanted it to be her killer, but I was prepared to make life miserable for everyone involved if it would get her some justice. I gave the detectives in Clarksville hell for months. They hated to see me coming, and they saw me much too often.”

“I can’t imagine how you must have felt.”

“I was so mad; I beat the hell out of the heavy bag at the gym every day for three weeks.” Mike looked out the window at nothing. “I couldn’t hit my father. I had to hit something.”

“Are you and your dad talking?”

Mike hesitated a moment, looked down at his note pad, and then shook his head without answering.

“Geez, Mike. Can’t you cut your old man some slack?”

“If he’d looked after Connie like he promised me, like a father is supposed to do, my little sister wouldn’t have been at that old quarry. She would still be here. I was on the other side of the planet serving my country; dealing with Saddam Hussein and all the other fanatical crazies.” Mike looked at Norm. “All he had to do was take care of a seventeen-year-old girl, and he blew it. She was his daughter, for God’s sake. If he’d paid as much attention to her as he did everyone else’s kids on his damn high school baseball teams,
Coach Neal
might have noticed his child was in danger. I have trouble with that.”

“Has there been any progress in the case lately?”

“I haven’t heard anything from the Clarksville detectives in months,” Mike said. “I think it’s just another cold case to
them
. I keep hoping something new will surface there, or here, that will rekindle the investigation, but so far there’s been nothing.”

Norm nodded his head.

Days were rare when Mike failed to make some type of personal effort toward the resolution of his sister’s murder. Mike vowed that this was one case
he
would never allow to become cold.

Mike sat quietly for a few minutes staring out the car window. “Even after all these years, I still feel like something will happen to point us in the right direction. I need to be able to close this chapter in my life—and in my father’s life too. If I can, then maybe he and I can find some common ground.”

Norm and Mike had previously discussed their dissimilar relationships with their fathers. Norm and his dad had been close, up until the elder Wallace’s passing five years ago. Mike hoped, at some point, he and
his
father could reconcile and find peace.

Mike’s cell phone rang.

“Mike Neal.”

“Mike? Lou Nelson.”

“Hey, Sergeant. What’s up?”

“I’m sure you know Crime Stoppers has received dozens of calls from alleged witnesses to the shooting last night at Sandstone.”

“There are a lot of folks who’d like to claim that reward,” Mike said, “but they haven’t been offering up anything new.”

“No,” the Sergeant said, “until now.”

Hubbard County, Tennessee

Monday Morning

Brad Evans sat motionless at the base of a large oak tree. He’d been in position since before first light.

Brad had been through his alertness routine already, but his muscles were telling him it would soon be time to repeat the procedure. The drill included the flexing of muscle groups and breathing control exercises. Meant to keep an aging shooter sharp during his wait, Brad developed the ritual for himself when he turned fifty and began to feel the effects of age. It worked to delay the dulling of senses and the numbness of muscles from prolonged inactivity.

He never had this problem in his younger pre-arthritic years, perched in the trees of Vietnam waiting for unaware Viet Cong to stroll into his kill-zone. His youthful conditioning throughout his twenties aided his ability to stay in the trees for days. The North Vietnamese placed a heavy bounty on all of America’s snipers who were captured alive. The chance to torture American snipers to death was of high value to the vicious enemy.

Only Brad’s eyes were moving; surveying for signs of activity around him. The polished senses of an Army-trained sniper, although learned thirty-plus years earlier, still provided him the focus he needed to block out all else, excluding his current objective.

He detected a faint rustle in the distance at his nine o’clock. Maintaining his body’s position, he gradually rotated his head toward the sound. Not yet able to confirm the source, he listened. He detected the faint crack of a branch as it was bent and then released, followed by the almost inaudible sound of dew-covered spring leaves slapping against each other. All sounds, his and the target’s, were magnified in the damp morning air.