Behind The Veil: A Gina Harwood Novel Page 11

  She dialed Morgan Snyder's cell with automatic fingers.

  “Harwood,” he acknowledged gruffly after a few rings.

  “Snyder,” she replied. “There yet?”

  “Not quite, got coffee. Be there in about five.”

  “Ah, ok.” She briefly considered reminding him about her coffee preference, but decided to just consider it a nice gesture if he got her coffee at all, especially after her coffee-related outburst the other day. “Is it Peter?”

  There was silence on the line for a moment, and then he coughed slightly. “I think so? You know, I didn't think to ask. I'll find out in a few minutes, I guess. I just heard the address and ...” She could see him shrugging.

  Gina felt herself forming a rebuke about assumptions, and furrowed her brow, confused. She didn't know either, and she'd done the same thing. Why did she want to take him to task for everything? “Yeah, I did the same thing,” she made herself confess. “No clue.” She forced a chuckle. “Some detectives, huh?”

  “Yeah, well, I'll see you in a few minutes, Harwood.” He sounded suddenly uncomfortable, and she winced.

  “Only if I decide not to run to Mexico for the sake of my beauty sleep,” she replied, mock-gruffly.

  He laughed, and it sounded genuine. Feeling relieved but very tired, Gina clicked off the line and tossed the cell phone up on the dash. The car was much warmer now, and the windows were threatening to fog over entirely, so she switched to defrost, popped on the windshield wipers to brush off the small flakes that were falling more rapidly now, and forced the car down the driveway and toward the crime scene.

  As it turned out, the victim was, indeed, Peter. And Snyder got her coffee order correct.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  Neighbors lined Hastings Street, like so many meerkats, craning their necks and inching as close as they dared to the flurry of police activity at number 224. Infamous yellow tape stretched across the door and along the property's borders; Morgan could see several patrolmen speaking to the onlookers, notebooks in hand. He nodded, satisfied, and noticed with further satisfaction that his partner hadn't yet arrived. He liked a moment alone to take it all in, get his mind working, but she usually beat him to any scene – unless it was in the middle of the night. And she got called after he did. He made a mental note to thank the rookie, and apologize for putting him through the horror of having to call her at two in the morning. Morgan shuddered.

  Warmth raced up his hands, and he was thankful for the coffee cups as he stepped out of the car and into the freezing night. Snow began to gather immediately on his hair, his eyelashes, his lapels. He glanced again at the neighbors – he bet they wouldn't stay out here very long. Curiosity only won out for so long against lowered body temperatures. Nodding at the officers he passed, he walked quickly to the front door and smiled as an older, pudgy policewoman pulled the plastic sheet aside for him to enter. “Thanks, Margie. You look entirely too pretty for so early in the morning. What's your secret?” She blushed and smiled back.

  “Yeah, right, Morgan. But thanks. Just wait til you get a load'a that one in there,” she replied, motioning for him to go inside. Morgan liked being a little flirty with the older women, or the ladies who didn't seem to get much attention; he always walked away feeling like he'd done a good deed. “She's somethin' else. Never seen 'er before,” she whispered conspiratorially. He flashed her a wide smile and walked into the house.

  He set the coffee cups on the glass stand in the foyer and slipped his leather gloves off, cracking his knuckles and stretching his fingers to warm them up before replacing leather with latex. There were a few floodlight lamps set up, but otherwise the house was mostly dark; one middle-aged, pepper-grey-haired officer was busy brushing the light switch next to the entry for fingerprints, a small metal flashlight stuck between his teeth. “Any luck?” asked Morgan.

  The officer glanced up and turned his attention right back to his work. Morgan recognized him as another Peter, but couldn't remember this one's last name. “Nnn,” he answered, which Morgan guessed was a 'no.' “Taa mnee sndges...” Morgan struggled with this one for a moment, but eventually translated it as “too many smudges.” He was only relatively fluent in flashlight-in-teeth-speak.

  “Okay, good hunting,” he said, walking on.

  There were two police photographers, neither of whom Morgan recognized. He squinted in the limited light, and fished his own mini-flashlight out of his coat pocket. Turning it on, he shined the light on the scene, but mostly on the two figures first. Even with the added light, he didn't think he'd ever seen these two before.

  “Hey,” he said, and his tone was somewhere between a friendly greeting and a warning. Both sets of eyes looked up at him, cameras frozen toward the victim in identical poses. One was a tall-looking blonde woman with striking hazel eyes that glinted dangerously in the flashlight's path; her lips were a dark scarlet and her eyes were heavily lined and smoky. She looked like she was going out to a five-star restaurant somewhere instead of a crime scene. She wasn't in a uniform, but in a well-tailored black skirt-suit and murderous-looking heels. Morgan blinked. This must be the one Margie was talking about, and she was right – he would have remembered her if he'd seen her before.

  The other photographer was as ordinary as the woman was extraordinary. He looked somewhere around middle-aged, a nondescript pasty-white, dark brown-black, close-cropped hair, bland-looking face and slightly almond-shaped eyes. He was the sort of person one might forget the moment he left a room; in fact, Morgan's eyes tried to go hazy just looking at the man. He wasn't in uniform either; he wore a slightly wrinkled, gray suit. Morgan pursed his lips. The Tulsa department was not a terribly large one, and though he might not know every single person who worked there, he generally at least recognized their faces; he certainly knew the officers entrusted to photograph the crime scenes. He didn't know either of these people.

  The too-ordinary man smiled up at him, and the smile was a dazzling one. Morgan cocked an eyebrow; that mesmerizing smile transformed his face into someone instantly likeable. Morgan, however, didn't like him one bit. The only surprises he wanted at his crime scenes were the ones authored by the victim or the killer.

  “Who are you?” he asked, more gruffly than he'd intended. The man's smile had thrown him off-guard. He glanced down at the body between them – it had been Peter O'Malley, but he had met a bad, bad end. Blood was everywhere. The flashlight briefly passed over the face, which was contorted with the pain of his last moments. Morgan took a deep breath to steady himself, and fought back a gag from the iron in the air. Whatever Harwood might think of him, death wasn't easy for Morgan either.

  The previously-ordinary man stood and extended a latex-gloved hand toward him, still smiling that disarming grin. Morgan eyed it suspiciously without extending his own, an uncharacteristically unfriendly action, but his mind wouldn't let him touch the man. The very thought bothered Morgan on a deep level. The man's smile faltered for a moment, but he renewed it and let his hand drop back to the camera. “I'm Yori,” he said, his voice unsurprisingly nondescript, but friendly.

  Morgan flipped open his notebook and clicked a pen. “Yori who?”

  “Yori Hanagawa,” the man replied pleasantly.

  Morgan looked up and shined the flashlight on his face again. “You don't look Chinese.”

  Yori Hanagawa smiled patiently. “I'm second-generation Japanese-American,” he explained.

  “And you? Who are you?” he threw the question around Yori's shoulder.

  Lips drew down into a thin frown, the scarlet almost disappearing. “I'm unaccustomed to being spoken to in such a way, I can tell you that,” the woman scowled.

  Morgan felt a little more at ease. She sounded like Harwood, and like many other pretty cops he knew – they seemed to feel compelled to be harder and harsher on the outside to make up for their good looks, as though everyone would think less of them because of how they looked. Maybe they did, Morgan didn't know. “What is your name
?” he asked, a little less coldly.

  She folded her arms. “Who wants to know?”

  Morgan didn't answer her. “Give me a few minutes with the scene, please,” he announced in no uncertain a tone, and waited.

  Neither of them budged.

  The detective was starting to feel a little unkind toward these strangers. Here it was, the middle of the night, he'd been awoken from a very promising dream, busted his ass to get here before Harwood did AND get the coffee, and he was damned if two newbie photographers were going to stand in the way of his precious minutes of solitude with the crime scene. It was when he did his best thinking.

  “That means get out,” he snarled.

  “I know what it means,” the woman snapped back at him, then she turned away from him and extracted her own notebook, ignoring him entirely and taking notes on the scene.

  Morgan was flabbergasted, even more so when he felt a hand on his arm and looked down to find Yori touching him with a sympathetic look. He yanked his arm away with a feeling of revulsion that threatened to overwhelm him.

  “I think perhaps you should talk to your supervisor, Detective Snyder,” he suggested, speaking slowly and clearly, as though Morgan were a dangerous offender instead of the homicide detective in charge of the scene.

  “What?” Many things were running through his mind, not the least of which was the unnatural horror of the man's touch; Morgan wasn't terribly touchy-feely, but he wasn't afraid of a hug or a hand on his arm either. How did this man know his name? And what supervisor? What were they talking about?

  “Why don't you go outside for a breather, Detective? Call Chief Ellison. I assure you, he's awake.” Yori Hanagawa gave him one last sympathetic smile and also turned his back on him, resuming the snap-click-flash of the camera. Peter's face flashed out of the darkness in response, the eyes so bright and glistening that they didn't seem dead at all.

  Something inside Morgan decided that the advice may be sound, and walked back outside, automatically grabbing both coffee cups on the way. The conscious Morgan was just along for the ride, lost in his own world of confusion and uncertainty. Margie said something to him as he passed, but he didn't acknowledge it, because he didn't fully hear it. He walked to a cop car and placed both cups on top of the car, robotically stripping off the latex gloves and replacing them with his warmer, leather ones.

  He flipped open his cell and looked at it for a moment, hesitating – what if the Chief wasn't up yet? Went back to bed? He imagined that dressing down would be far worse than anything Harwood could offer, and it carried the authority of somebody who could do something severe about their irritation. The Chief's bark came with bite. The mechanical growl of another engine caught his attention and he looked up to see his partner's car sliding to a halt in front of his own; literally, sliding, as the ground was beginning to ice over and her tires were nearly bald. She managed to miss anything that would have damaged her car, or vice-versa, and slid to a halt a few feet from a patrol car. He watched, bemused, as she carefully got out of the car, then lost her footing and clung to the door again for balance. Eventually, hand over hand on the hood of the vehicle, she made it to where he was standing.

  “No help, huh?” she said, with only a smidgen of her normal irritation. Morgan wondered how much she had taken out on the caller, and felt bad for the rookie cop again. “What's the scene like?” She peered over, eager to get started.

  Morgan put a hand on her shoulder to tell her to wait, and finished dialing the chief's number. Then he pointed at her coffee.

  She looked confused at the first motion, but grabbed her cup gratefully and sipped from it; steam was still escaping from the small hole in the lid. Harwood threw him a wry smile and nodded her head in appreciation.

  “Yeah?” a voice gruffer than his could ever hope to be answered the phone.

  Morgan fought a wave of panic. The Chief certainly sounded like he'd been asleep. “Uh, yes, sir, this is Detective Snyder. There are two... individuals... I don't recognize on the scene here, and...”

  “They're feds, Morgan,” the Chief sounded highly annoyed, but Morgan guessed it wasn't entirely because of his phone call.

  He waited, but the voice offered no further information.

  “They're blocking me from doing my job,” informed Morgan as levelly as he could.

  “It's their scene, now, Detective,” Ellison snapped. “Let them finish, and I'm sure they'll let you look around. But I was told in no uncertain terms not to interfere with 'their investigation.'” He spat these last words out of his mouth as though they tasted terrible. “Don't be the cause of any further calls I get, Morgan, I don't like talking to these bastards. You understand me, Snyder? Make sure Harwood understands me, too.”

  The warning was perfectly clear. Morgan glanced at his partner, who was still sipping her coffee, but looked cold. She was watching him intently with what looked suspiciously like growing impatience. 'Caught between the Chief and Harwood,' he thought. 'And Feds. Great.'

  “Yes, sir, loud and clear.” He didn't trust himself to any further words, so he wisely snapped his mouth shut and kept it there.

  “No one better wake me up again,” growled the Chief. “Goodnight, Morgan.”

  “Sorry, Chief,” Morgan said, but it was too late – the line was already dead.

  Harwood looked positively out of her mind. “CHIEF? What the hell, Snyder? Calling the CHIEF at this hour? What, didn't the rookie call him?”

  Morgan sighed and motioned for her to keep her voice down; he didn't think it would matter, of course, but he felt he should at least attempt to prevent this from becoming a bigger scene. At least, part of him did. The other half wanted to scream as loud as Harwood could, throw a giant tantrum, and see, between the two of them, exactly how large a scene they could make. 'Feds! Here? On my case?' Thoughts ran round his head, and he again became aware of the two searing points of heat coming from his partner's questioning eyes. “Well, it's complicated...” he started, unsure of how to defuse the situation, especially considering that he wasn't certain he wanted it defused.

  Instead of flying off the handle, she waited in an unusual semblance of patience. She didn't say a word, though her teeth clacked lightly in the cold.

  “There are others on the scene already,” he ventured.

  Harwood's eyebrows shot upward in surprise. “What others?” she demanded.

  “Chief says they're feds. I walked in and found them photographing the vic.” Morgan shrugged. “They pretty much ordered me out until they were done. Said to call the Chief. He just said they were feds, and to leave them alone til they're done, just like they asked.” Morgan leaned against the patrol car and wished he hadn't given up smoking the prior year; he closed his eyes and could almost feel the filter pinched between his lips. The long, hot draw of smoke...

  “What agency?” Harwood's sharp voice broke his reverie.

  “Huh?”

  She sighed, one of her long, drawn-out, patronizing sighs. “Are they FBI? Why is the FBI interested in our case? Is it interstate? Serial? We tried to find any style matches and came up empty...”

  Morgan shrugged. “I don't know.”

  “Aren't you interested?”

  He considered the breathtakingly beautiful blonde with the demeanor colder than the night air, and could almost not remember what her partner looked like. “Not particularly,” he lied.

  “Well, I am.” She turned on her heel and walked toward the front door, gripping her coffee with both hands and holding it out in front of her like a shield.

  Morgan groaned inwardly and followed closely behind.

  “Hello!” he heard her say, in an unusually bright and cheery voice, as he ducked past the front-door plastic. “I'm Detective Gina Harwood. I was just informed that this is no longer my crime scene, so I hoped to be able to introduce myself and put some names to some faces. Who are you, please?”

  Morgan now groaned outwardly and stepped forward to stand a few feet behind his part
ner, surveying the scene. He fought the urge to grab Harwood by the arm and drag her bodily out of the house '...for now,' he amended to himself.

  Surprisingly, the blonde seemed to be handling this intrusion much more warmly than Morgan's. She had stepped away from the body, clicked on a small lamp to provide more light than just the flashlights, and was flashing a dazzling smile at Harwood. “I'm Charlie Parker.” She leaned closer and, unbelievably to Morgan, winked at Harwood. “Short for Charlene.”

  Morgan couldn't see Harwood's face, but he wished he could. He could just imagine the look of shock plastered on her mug.

  “Pleased to meet you, Charlie,” replied Harwood, still sounding strangely casual. “Are you two FBI? We don't get many federal agents down here, you understand. I hope my partner,” - here she swept her hand toward Morgan- “didn't give you much trouble.”

  He bit his tongue as hard as he could to keep from scowling.

  Charlie laughed, a coldly musical sound. 'They're like two tigers circling each other,' thought Morgan to himself. A glance at Hanagawa showed the suited man studying a blood spatter intently, occasionally scribbling wildly on his graph paper notebook. Morgan could see the paper, but couldn't quite make out the writing; peering, he felt certain it wasn't English.

  “Well, would you care to see our badges?” Charlie didn't wait for confirmation from Harwood before striding over to the Asian man and digging in his pockets for his badge. He didn't seem to care, or even notice, as far as Morgan could tell. She withdrew her own black leather case smoothly from her inside jacket pocket and presented them both to Harwood.