Superbia (Book One of the Superbia Series) (14 page)

Frank waited to
speak until Vic had finished and caught his breath.
 
“Can I talk now?
 
I was trying to decide if it was necessary to
get you all upset about it.
 
I have no
interest in the FBI or anything like that.
 
All I ever wanted to be was a town clown, and that’s what I am.”

Vic sat back down
and said, “Oh.”

“So let me ask
you, just from me to you, with no hidden meanings, are we going to sign Billy
up as a CI or not?
 
The guy he can work
seems like a badass and we should focus on getting him while we can.”
 

Vic looked like
he was having trouble making sense of Frank’s words.
 
“You’re a cop all of a sudden?”

Frank pulled out
his badge and showed it to Vic, “You see this?
 
It might be silver now, but it’s about to turn gold.
 
I am the next not-even-promoted detective,
buddy, and you better get used to it.
 
I
swear to God.”

***

Vic raised his
hand to knock on the door, but stopped and said, “You do it.”

Frank rapped gently
on the screen door, and Vic scowled and pushed him out of the way.
 
“Nobody’s going to take you seriously if you
do it like that.
 
Here, watch this.”
 
Vic put his hand flat against the metal frame
to hold it in place and kicked several times, loud enough to make Frank cover
his ears.
 
“You need to get their
attention or they think you’re the landlord coming to collect rent or
something.”
 

There was no
answer.
 
Frank said, “Nice technique,
boss.
 
Works great.”

Vic looked back
at the driveway and saw Helen’s cars were there.
 
“Maybe they went for a walk?”

Frank
shrugged.
 
He bent to peek through the
porch window and saw that the television was on.
 
“Knock again.”

Vic held the
screen door and kicked it again, harder and louder.
 
He banged on the frame with his fist and shouted,
“Open up, Billy.
 
It’s the police!”
 

Frank pressed his
face against the window, “There’s food on the counter.
 
Half-empty bottle of milk on the coffee
table.
 
If they’re not here, they left in
a hurry.”

“Shit,” Vic
said.
 
He opened the screen door and
reached for the door’s handle when he saw that the frame around it was
cracked.
 
There was a large footprint on
the center of the door where someone had kicked it in.
 
Vic drew his gun and pushed the door open the
rest of the way.
 
“Billy?
 
Mrs. Helen?
 
You in here?”

Both of them
crouched low, keeping their guns aimed at the hallway.
 
“Police!” Frank announced.
 
“Anybody in here?”

They moved
together toward the hall, keeping out of the deadly “fatal funnel” where anyone
could be ambushed as they squeezed together into a smaller location.
 
Vic pressed himself against the sidewall and
poked his gun and face into the hallway at the three doors that waited.
 
“One bathroom and two bedrooms,” he
whispered.
 
“We’ll take them one at a
time.”

Frank moved in behind
him, keeping his gun aimed down the hall when Vic swung into the first
doorway.
 
It was the bathroom, and he instantly
threw the shower curtain aside, expecting someone to be hiding behind it.
 
“Clear.”
 

Frank felt Vic’s
hand on his shoulder and they continued down the hall, moving so slow that
Frank’s leg started to tremble from the weight.
 
He was about to turn to the first bedroom, when Vic grabbed him and whispered,
“Don’t move.”

Frank looked down
at the dried drop of blood on the dirty carpet, leading back to the master
bedroom at the end of the hallway.
 
Both
men straddled the blood trail and hurried down the hall until they came to the
door.
 
“Ready?
 
Go!”

They piled into
the bedroom, turning with their weapons in every direction of the ransacked
room.
 
Dressers were overturned and
drawers lay broken on the floor.
 
Clothing and bedsheets were strewn about the room and someone had cut
the mattress open with a knife.
 
On the
surface of the mattress, soaked into the cotton and sliced open fabric was a
pool of blackened, crusted blood.
 

Vic stood staring
down at the bed and finally said, “Ruh-roh.”
 

***

Two cars rolled
down the street toward the Helen house.
 
Staff
Sergeant Erinnyes arrived first in his green unmarked police take-home vehicle
followed by Special Agent Dolos’ Audi.
 
Dez stepped out of the car and fixed his suit coat, toying with the cufflink
on his right sleeve.
 
Erinnyes waddled
toward the front step and reached out for the strip of neon crime scene tape,
when Frank said, “Stand by, sir!
 
You
can’t come in.”

Erinnyes looked
up at him with a thin-lipped smirk, “Excuse me, patrolman?”

Frank waved the
clipboard in his hand as he came down the steps.
 
“I’m running the crime scene log and not
allowed to let anyone in unless authorized by the Chief or Detective Ajax.”

Erinnyes’s face
darkened as he looked at the FBI agent and then back at Frank.
 
“Get out of my way.
 
That is a direct order.”
 

Frank shrugged
and said, “I’m already following the Chief’s order, sir.
 
Don’t get mad at me for doing what I’m told,
here.”

“Actually, I
think he might be right,” Dez said.
 
“Too
many people in there will destroy the evidence.
 
That is, what evidence remains.”

Erinnyes sneered
in agreement.
 
“Go and tell the Chief of
Police that I have arrived, and that Special Agent Dolos has accompanied me at
my request to oversee the kidnapping investigation.”

Frank went back
up the stairs, using the handrail to support his leg.
 
He disappeared into the house only to return
a moment later and say, “The Chief said to let Agent Dolos in, but that it’s
already pretty
tight
in here.”
 
His eyes lowered to Erinnyes’s bulging
stomach, “They can only
squeeze
so
many people in there at once, sir.”

Dez lifted the
crime scene tape and headed up the stairs past Frank.
 
He put on a pair of black rubber gloves and
delicately opened the screen door.
 
Vic
was standing in the living room talking to the Chief.
 
“Un-fucking-believable,” Dez said.
 
“This is on your head, Ajax.”

“Oh, kiss my ass,
you pompous dick,” Vic said.
 
“Chief, we
don’t need this asshole coming in here trying to tell us how to do an
investigation.”

“Like hell you
don’t,” Dez said.
 
“If you’d done what I
told you to do yesterday, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.
 
I’ve got an entire family missing and it’s
all your fault.”

“Really?
 
How was signing Billy up as a CI going to
prevent the bad guys from showing up and doing this?”

“Well maybe at
the very least, if you’d reached out to him, we’d have discovered the
kidnapping an entire day earlier,” Dez said.
 
“Now, they’re probably all dead in a gutter somewhere because you were
too lazy to come talk to him.”

Vic shouted
something back when the Chief held up his hands and said, “Enough!
 
Both of you shut your mouths right now!”
 
He turned to Vic and said, “The FBI is here
to conduct this investigation with the full spectrum of their resources.
 
Is that understood?”

Vic bit his lip
but managed to nod.
 

The Chief turned
to the FBI agent and said, “This is our town, and our case.
 
My detectives are staying with it until the
bitter end.
 
We are not handing it over,
is that clear?”

“Of course,
sir.
 
We only want to help.”
 
Dez flashed a smile at the Chief, “After all,
we’re on the same team.”

The Chief fixed
his hat to his head and headed for the door.
 
“I want this situation resolved, gentlemen.
 
Get moving.”

Frank held the
door open for the Chief and turned to see Vic and Dez glaring at one
another.
 
“Was it just me or did he say
Detectives
?
”

***

They walked Dez
through the crime scene and showed him the bloody, ripped up mattress in the
back bedroom.
 
Dez frowned at the mass of
blood, then carefully inspected the walls and furniture around the bed.
 
He even looked up at the ceiling.
 
“You guys see any blood spatter?”

“No,” Vic said.
 
He quickly added, “I already looked for it.”

Dez sighed,
“Well, I guess that’s a good thing.”

“Why?” Frank
asked.
 

“It means they’re
probably alive.
 
Or at least, they were
when they left here,” Dez said.

“I don’t
know…that’s a whole lot of blood,” Frank said.

“Not really,” Vic
said.
 
“You ever had a nose bleed?
 
It can pour like a faucet.
 
Maybe Paris punched Billy in the face and
threw him down on the bed.”

“Or Billy’s
wife,” Dez said.
 

Frank bent over
the mattress to inspect it.
 
“What about
all the cuts?”

Dez ran his
finger along the one of the long slits and said, “He was looking for the money.
 
He probably thought they were hiding it in
the mattress.”

“He should have
checked the dirty baby diapers,” Frank grimaced.

Dez looked at
them both, “What do you mean?”

“Long story,” Vic
said.
 
“Listen, are we going to work this
together for real, or are we going to keep bickering?”

“I only care
about the case, Vic.
 
You know that.
 
What do you want to do?”
 

“We need a crime
scene unit here to process, a surveillance team at Paris’ house, and somebody
to do the search warrants and court orders for the phones.
 
How many people can you spare?”

“As many as you
need,” Dez said.
 

Vic clapped his
hands together and said, “We’re gonna nail this bastard!
 
Me and Frank will head down to Paris’ house
to help out with surveillance and track his ass down.
 
I want to see the look on his face when he
sees me coming through his door.”

“Excellent,” Dez
said.
 
He looked out at the driveway
where the Chief and Staff Sergeant were standing.
 
“I left my phone in the car.
 
Can you two stay here while I go get it in
case one of those two nudniks try to barge in?”

“Absolutely.”

Frank held the
door open for Dez and watched him go down the steps.
 
“Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all.”

Dez stopped in
front of the Chief and spoke to him.
 
The
Chief smiled and shook Dez’s hand firmly.
 
“Nah, he’s not that bad when it comes to stuff like this.
 
Say whatever you want about him, he loves the
job and will see it gets done.
 
He and I
are a lot alike, I think.
 
That is why
we—.”
 
Vic stopped speaking as Dez hopped
into his vehicle and peeled out of the gravel driveway, kicking up a large
amount of dust as he gunned it.
 
Vic crashed
through the porch door and shouted, “Where the hell is he going?”

The Chief looked
up at him in confusion.
 
“He said he’s
going down to the target’s residence to do surveillance while you two process
the crime scene.”

Vic kicked the
metal hand-railing hard enough that it vibrated and left a rust mark stamped on
the front of his boot.
 
He pushed past
Frank to go back into the house and grabbed a stack of mail from the countertop
and threw them into the kitchen.
 

Something buzzed
in Frank’s pocket.
 
He reached for his
phone and picked it up to read a message from Dez:
Tell him not to forget to photograph the scene before he collects any
evidence. XOXO.
 

“What does it
say,” Vic snarled.

“Nothing,” Frank
said.

“It’s from him,
isn’t it.”

“Nope.”

“Let me see it.”

“It was from my
wife, Vic, and no, I won’t let you see it.
 
It was personal.”
 
He closed the
phone and put it in his pocket.
 
“So do
you want me to take some pictures before we collect any evidence?”

***

They stacked bags
all shapes and sizes by the front door.
 
Frank made a trip to the local Home Depot for four packs of paper lawn
bags that were big enough to stuff the pillows and comforters into.
 
He bent down to scoop up a handful of cotton
stuffing that had sprung out of the ruined pillow when he heard Vic say,
“Because I’m stuck at work, Danni.
 
It’s
not like I sit on my ass all day just watching the money roll in.
 
I have a job here and I can’t leave until
it’s finished.”