21 Weeks: Week 2, Page 2

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  “It’s him.” Thrusting the file of printouts she’d put together as soon as she got in that morning under Bishop’s nose, Beck watched his eyes rise in irritation.

  “What is this?” Bishop asked as he took the file.

  “This is our vic.”

  “This says the victim OD’d.”

  “He did,” Beck said. “But he didn’t do it alone.”

  “He did, actually. Says so right here.” Turning the file toward her, Bishop apparently expected some sort of concession that, if the file said it, it must be right, but Beck wasn’t going to see anything she hadn’t already seen. She’d been staring at the damn thing all morning.

  “I don’t care what it says. I am telling you, this man was tortured.”

  “An addict getting one last high is hardly what I would call torture.” Bishop snapped the file shut and tossed it aside.

  “It is if he’s trying to stay clean.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Bishop asked. “We can’t investigate an OD that looks like an OD. His prints were on the syringe. The drugs came off the street.”

  “You don’t believe me.” It wasn’t a question. Beck could see that he didn’t.

  “I know this guy has been picked up for possession half a dozen times.” Bishop motioned to his computer screen as Anthony Figueroa’s past mistakes were put on display.

  “Twenty-five years ago,” Beck said, but the time lapse was clearly insignificant to Bishop, who leaned back in his chair with a grunt of disagreement.

  Beck didn’t want to do it. She sincerely did not. Despite what Williams might have thought the day before when she went digging on her own, she had no desire to start anything with Bishop. She just wanted to know what they were up against as soon as the evidence allowed.

  “If you won’t listen to me, I’m going over your head.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “You asked for my help,” Beck said.

  “Yes,” Bishop retorted. “‘Help’ being the vital word. Conspiracy theories don’t help.”

  “I’m going to talk to Martinez.” Beck plucked the file back off Bishop’s desk.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Bishop uttered as she moved for Martinez’s office, and it was exactly how Beck didn’t want their working relationship to go.

  Hearing Bishop shove out of his chair behind them, she glanced to Williams, who looked as if he was having some trouble keeping the turn in the conversation down. Wondering if he regretted his voluntary partnership with her yet, Beck did hope she hadn’t already given him ulcers.

  “What’s going on?” Martinez could see there was contention as soon as he raised his head.

  “The woman from the cabin at Mt. Charleston is not our vic.” Beck minced no words as she put the file in his hand. “This is our victim.”

  Glancing over Beck’s shoulder, Martinez watched the commotion as Bishop joined Williams in the doorway before cracking the file.

  “This says the man OD’d.”

  “I know what the file says,” Beck said. “I am asking you to please give us permission to investigate this OD as a homicide.”

  “Clearly, you disagree.” Martinez glanced again to the doorway.

  “There is not a single reason to think this guy had any help putting a needle in his arm,” Bishop returned. “Besides, the killer has never done anything like this.”

  “You said his m.o. changes,” Beck tossed over her shoulder.

  “From knife to hammer to scalpel to screwdriver, not to lethal injection,” Bishop proclaimed.

  Sinking back in his chair, Martinez ran his fingers over his goatee, and, based on the number of times she’d seen him do it in her short time there, Beck wondered if it possessed some sort of spiritual juju, like the Oracle at Delphi, as he looked back and forth between them.

  “What do you think?” He put Williams on the spot, and Beck knew it was the worst spot for Williams to be in, being forced to take a side between her and Bishop.

  It was also the moment of truth.

  “I think Nash makes valid points.”

  “Is that your vote, then? The guy who OD’d over the woman in the cabin?” Martinez questioned.

  “Yes,” Williams said. “I’m with Beck.”

  “Well, all right.” Martinez closed the file and presented it back to them. “If you two have faith in this theory, go look into it. See if you can find a single piece of evidence that makes this look like something other than an addict getting a fatal fix.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” Relief pouring through her as she took the file back, it dissipated when Beck turned to see Bishop wasn’t at all amused.

  “Are you going with them?” Martinez asked him.

  “No.” Bishop turned back through the door.

  Following him out, Beck was glad she didn’t need him to agree in order to do her job, but she knew it would make her life a whole lot easier if he did.

  11 - Parkrise Apartments - Thursday, 10:05 a.m.

  “Well, this is just fantastic.” Staring into the sparse room - furniture still in place, but everything else inconveniently missing - Beck wondered what they were supposed to do with nothing.

  “Hey,” Mr. Freese, the building’s super, responded. “The police took down the tape. I gotta rent this place.”

  “What did you do with his stuff?”

  When the man’s eyes flicked into the tiny studio, Beck was fairly certain the furnishings still in the apartment were, in fact, part of the victim’s stuff. But a furnished place bringing in a couple hundred dollars more each month, she knew they would never get Mr. Freese to admit it.

  “It’s all still here,” he said. “I put it down in the basement.”

  “Give us a minute.” Backing him into the hallway with a forward step, Beck closed the door and looked to Williams.

  “So, what are we looking for?” Williams asked as he took the main part of the room.

  “I don’t know,” Beck admitted. At this point, she wasn’t sure it even mattered. Crime scene cleared for business, the super was, luckily, too cheap to hire a licensed cleaning crew - for them, not for whoever moved in next - and his idea of clean wasn’t exactly “white glove.” Swiping a finger across the countertop, she came away with a layer of grime that looked at least a month thick. “Vic hasn’t used in twenty years. There’s no point in looking for a dealer, especially if he didn’t buy the drugs himself.”

  “If?” Williams glanced her way. “Questioning your own theory now?”

  “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to investigate it,” Beck countered. “The syringes are available online, without a prescription. Though, I could find no record of Anthony buying them, he could have gotten them on the street. It looks like an OD.”

  “Well, he did OD,” Williams stated. “That’s not really the question, is it?”

  “No.” It wasn’t. The question was whether Anthony did that on his own, or was forced. But how?

  His personal effects stored away, Beck had nothing to do but open things. Starting with the cabinets of the tiny kitchenette, she found most of the kitchenware in place, pots and pans and mismatched dishes, likely also the original property of Mr. Figueroa.

  “I’m going to check in the bathroom,” Williams announced as Beck shut the last cabinet, but she couldn’t imagine it being of much use. So many of the man’s things left behind, everything that made him a real person - his books and clothes and food and random objects - were gone.

  It was a place completely devoid of personality.

  Noticing the tape marks at the corner of the refrigerator door, it wasn’t because tape marks were particularly illuminating as far as clues went, but because Beck had just seen the same marks on the interior of a cabinet door. Tracking back to it, she popped it open, staring at the scar left on the wood inside.

  “Nothing.” Williams returned a moment later.

  “Did you see any tape marks anywhere?”

  “Ye
ah, on the bathroom mirror,” Williams said. “And the standing mirror in the corner. The footboard of the bed. Why? What are they?”

  “Let’s go to the basement,” Beck responded.