Soundbyte (-byte series Book 5) Read online

  Sam opened the door to the building. Inside kids played basketball; on the far right was a doorway. Outside the door, several people sat on a bench seat. They didn’t look like they were waiting for a game.

  Sam indicated the bench. I nodded. We walked over, doing our best not to panic anyone. Not easy. It was a jumpy part of town. One guy scrambled to his feet and took off at a sprint. Sam hollered after him, “We’re not here for anyone. Chill.”

  He slammed out the door. A second later his head popped back in.

  “For reals?”

  “For real. Chill man,” Sam replied.

  The young man put on his swagger and sauntered back to the seat. “Yo, Five-oh not here for us,” he drawled.

  I smiled then said, “You know Caps or Tats?”

  The kid looked at me with open suspicion and with a shake of his head he refused to answer.

  “I’m Agent Ellie – do you know Caps or Tats?” I dropped my voice which forced him to listen.

  A light went on deep in his eyes. “Yo, Agent Ellie – why didn’t you say so? Everyone round here knows you.”

  Sam knocked on the door. No one answered, yet we could hear muffled voices from within the room.

  Sam knocked again.

  Still nothing.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” he said to the kid.

  “Jermaine.”

  “Jermaine – is the lawyer in?”

  “I hope so, man.” He looked disturbed by the question. “I been waiting all day, y’all.”

  The other two people on the bench nodded in agreement.

  “All day?” Sam affirmed checking his watch. “It’s half twelve.”

  “Yo, all morning, all day.” He shrugged. “I be waiting a long time. She’s real good – otherwise I’d go somewhere else.”

  I got the feeling there wasn’t much choice and somewhere else would cost a lot more than the kid had.

  “All of you been waiting a while?” Sam said to the others.

  They nodded.

  My heart sank. Sam and I looked at each other for a beat, his eyes saying what I thought. There was nothing good behind the door. I took latex gloves from my pocket and put them on. Sam did the same.

  I pulled my Glock and motioned for everyone to move away from the door. Sam’s gun was in his hand. The basketball game stopped. An ominous silence fell.

  I knocked on the door and called out. No answer.

  I tried the handle.

  Locked.

  I looked at Jermaine. “You can run, right? Go get Caps.” Caps would know if any strangers had been around, he’d also help us keep everyone calm. We were going to need some calm.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He took off as though his ass was on fire.

  “Want me to do that, Chicky?” Sam whispered indicating to the door.

  “Nah, I got it.”

  He shrugged. “I can kick in a door.”

  “Humor me. You can do the next one.”

  Sam stepped aside.

  I took a breath, braced myself on the doorframe, and kicked the wood by the door handle and the lock. Wood splintered. The lock groaned. I kicked again. The door scraped the frame as it opened.

  I staggered a little getting my balance and almost fell through the doorway. Sam grabbed my arm to steady me.

  “You okay?”

  “Yep,” I replied. My eyes fell on the desk by the far wall. A woman was slumped in a pool of blood. The metallic smell hit me hard and took me back to every crime scene I’d ever visited.

  Someone gasped behind me. I took a quick look over my shoulder. It was one of the basketball players. Color faded fast from his face and neck. “Sit on the floor. Put your head between your knees. You’ll be okay,” I said. “Just breathe.”

  Meanwhile, I tried not to breathe. The cloying, metallic smell of blood crawled into my nose and throat; its foul tendrils grabbed at my tonsils and threatened to choke me. I coughed. I smothered the desire to pull up my shirt to cover my nose and mouth to filter the smell out; I fought it with every fiber in my being. Unprofessional conduct.

  My eyes were drawn to something on the floor. It was the origin of the voices: a CD player. That was just clever enough to keep everyone from suspecting what was going on behind the closed door.

  My breathing was shallow and controlled. Viewing the room in increments seemed safer than letting the scene pummel me with its horror. I steeled myself for the inevitable. Not without effort, I mentally stepped back from the scene and looked around. Forcing myself to see the entire room and deal with what was in front of me wasn’t easy.

  My focus changed with each slow breath until I could approach the task with objectivity. There was nowhere for anyone to hide. The window was half-open, but barred. The door had been locked from the inside. I moved her hair and placed two fingers on her carotid artery. No pulse, not that I expected one. A lot of blood had spilled from the desk onto the floor. I inspected Marika’s wounds. Someone had beaten her about the head and face with something solid.

  She was more hamburger than human. I could see bits of skull and hair on the walls. Splatter. Maybe the weapon was a baseball bat or chair leg.

  I considered it possible that she died before her husband but the killer did not want her discovered until much later. Which made sense – if she were found too early, it would ruin his plan to kill the husband. Why would someone want to kill them both?

  I ripped the soiled latex gloves off my hands, balled them up and handed them to Sam. He dropped them into an open evidence bag he’d placed by the door for our trash.

  My hand slipped onto my phone. “Sandra – we need to locate the Bleich boys. Find them and set up protection – I want them in a safe house.” It was possible they were behind the deaths; it wouldn’t be the first time children killed their parents. Working on the adage innocent until proven guilty, their safety was a priority.

  “I’ve got the address.” Her fingers tapped at the keys on her keyboard. “I will send Lee and Kurt.”

  “Thanks, and send uniforms with them.” I paused. “Call me when the kids are safe.” I wanted at least one of the boys to do the formal identifications; it would cut down on the requirement for DNA and there was the possibility that viewing the bodies would trigger something, a smidge of visible guilt, a confession, or a memory.

  “Absolutely,” she said and hung up.

  I slid my phone back into my pocket, pulled out a fresh pair of latex gloves, and used one to turn off the CD player. There was a CD jewel case on the floor. I looked at the cover where it lay. An audio book. I checked the CD player settings. It was on repeat. The damn thing had been playing for hours.

  Sam disappeared from view. His head bobbed up from the other side of the desk. “Look at this,” he said.

  I joined him, dodging congealing blood puddles. Sam pointed to something long and wooden, hair and blood stuck to it like a macabre artwork. I bent down a little and peered under the desk.

  “Is that a wooden baseball bat?”

  “I’d say so,” Sam replied. “Could be our murder weapon.”

  “Yep.”

  We left everything where it was so the crime scene unit could photograph the room and gather evidence when they arrived.

  A babble of voices and commotion outside interested me. I went to investigate. Caps stood in the middle of the basketball court slinging orders. He stopped and nodded at me. “Setting up a perimeter, Agent Ellie, until you can get your crime scene people here.”

  No surprise. If it weren’t for a string of convictions and some decent jail time, he’d make a damn good Fed. His leadership and people skills were enviable. I know I envied them, because me slapping anyone upside the head was frowned upon.

  “Thanks, Caps. You and I need to talk, but gimme a few, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He carried on doing a fine impersonation of a drill sergeant.

  I hustled back to Sam. He was calling in the murder and requesting a Crime Scene Unit.

  The woman at the d
esk stared at me with lifeless cloudy eyes. A couple of times I thought her eyes followed me. Creepy.

  Thoughts about the dead husband and wife revolved in my head. It could be over a diamond but it sure didn’t feel like it. ‘Maria Nay’ started up again. And again, it made no sense. The song interfered with my thought processes. I let the words wash over me hoping one or two would flag something useful. Nothing grabbed me.

  It took a lot of effort to ignore the performance in my mind and concentrate on the now. I looked at the lock. It wasn’t the most secure of locks, one of the older types within the door handle. You push the button to lock the door. I knew from the bathroom at home when we were kids that you could lock it then shut the door. My brother used to think it was funny to leave the bathroom with the door locked. It also taught me how easy it was to pick that type of lock using a knife. I checked the outside, no marks on the lock. It seemed feasible that Marika let the person in. The visitor then clubbed her to death, locking the door as he or she left.

  Vicious. Would’ve been noisy too.

  I went back out into the hall and said, “Who was here first this morning?”

  They all looked at each other and shrugged. Caps rocked up in front of me. He took a step back and stood next to me. “Yo yo, y’all, don’t be trippin’, the lady has a question.”

  He got their attention.

  “Who was here first and what time did you arrive?” I said.

  A young man about twenty years old came forward. “I gots here at eight-thirty.”

  “Thank you. Anyone earlier?” Everyone shook their heads. “So you and Jermaine were here the earliest? What’s your name?”

  “Mikey,” he said.

  “Was anyone else here, someone who looked out of place?” I swept my arm around the hall. “Or in there with Mrs. Bleich?”

  He looked at Caps. There was an almost imperceptible nod from Caps. I knew that nod and that look.

  “Mikey, you need to tell me.”

  “Ms. Marika she was talking to someone, talking loud when I arrived.”

  “Loud like shouting? Or loud excited talking.”

  “Like shouting but not angry, controlled and loud.”

  “Did you hear anyone else?”

  He shook his head. “But I did record Ms. Marika.”

  I smiled. “You recorded her?”

  “Was playing with my mp3 player. It records shit. So I tried it out. No harm.”

  “None at all, can I hear it?”

  He handed the small black device to me. “Keep it.”

  That was my intention. “I’ll get it back to you once we’ve downloaded the recording.”

  He nodded. “I never saw no one leave.”

  “Were you here the whole time?”

  “Yeah, I wanted to see Ms. Marika today. Ya know if you leave, someone takes your spot.” He glanced toward Jermaine. Little bit of rivalry perhaps.

  “Did you hear anything else?”

  “No. I recorded some of the talking then listened to music.”

  Music. I didn’t imagine for one second he was listening to anything I classified as music. I checked the volume on his mp3 player. Volume set to stun. He sure wouldn’t have heard anything external. A bomb could’ve gone off and it wouldn’t have interrupted him.

  “Thank you.”

  He stepped aside. I called out to Jermaine, “Jermaine do you have one of these too?” The mp3 player was in my hand, I held it up for him to see.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Show me.”

  Jermaine ambled over. He took his mp3 player from his pocket and handed it to me. I checked the volume. Also set to stun, as I expected.

  “Why’d you do that?” he said as I handed it back with a smile.

  “Were you listening to that this morning?”

  “Yeah. Can’t sit here with no tunes.” He shrugged.

  As I thought. You’d be hard pushed to find anyone under thirty who didn’t wear headphones or a smaller equivalent. They may as well live in a fuc’n bubble. No wonder this generation will suffer from hearing loss by age twenty-five.

  “Thank you, Jermaine.” I turned to Caps. “I’ll be back there with Sam.”

  “I’ll be here. You need anything, you holler.” A frown creased his brow. “Is it true what they said … you were shot on F?”

  I shrugged. “It was nothing, a flesh wound.”

  Caps frown flipped and became a full-blown grin. “Watch your back out there,” he said. “I ask around …”

  “I appreciate it.”

  Armed with the recording I went back to Sam.

  “We have a recording of Marika to listen to.” It bugged me that someone was here but no one saw anyone leaving. I handed Sam the mp3 player and looked around the room. We knew there was one door and a barred window, but how else could someone leave? It dawned on me as I looked up. “Sam, a trapdoor, right above the desk.”

  He looked up. We both looked at the surface of the desk. A sizable blood pool. Marika’s head. Paper work and the desk surface splattered in blood and brain matter. Not much by way of a clear space. No footprint, but the pooled blood right under the trap door was displaced toward one edge. We looked at each other; I’m guessing my frown mimicked his.

  “Unless he’s Houdini I don’t see how he got up there without leaving some kind of trace,” I said looking from the desk to the ceiling. “And tall, or at least six foot. On second thoughts, I would take off my shoes and throw them up first, then climb up. Socks leave less impression than soles of shoes. See this?” I pointed to the displaced area. “No footprint as such but the edge of the pool is different from the rest of the blood. I’d say he was wearing socks not shoes. It would be easier to dodge the bulk of the bloody goop in socks.”

  “And again, you are scary.”

  I smiled. “I would make an excellent criminal – you’re only scared because you know no one could catch me.”

  He lit the room with his brilliant smile. “I’d catch you. Let’s find out where it goes,” Sam said. He pocketed the mp3 player and headed out the door. “Yo, Caps. Trapdoor in the ceiling in Marika’s office – is there another one?”

  “My brutha, Agent Sam.” Their right hands met in midair, which was followed by a fast but solid man hug. “There is another trapdoor in the kitchen.” He pointed to the other end of the hall.

  We ran over and looked. The trapdoor was open. It opened upward. There was a brownish smudge on the floor underneath. I inspected the smudge and followed a short mucky trail to the window above the sink. “There’s blood here, potential transfer from clothing.” I saw smears on the edge of the counter and across a cupboard. “The killer went out the window then pushed it almost shut from the outside.” I leaned over the countertop and peered out the window, it was a long drop to the ground below. “We might get lucky with prints on the outside of the frame.”

  “This wasn’t an opportunistic thing – or a death after a heated argument,” Sam said.

  “Nope, this was planned. The Unsub already knew how to get out. We’re looking for someone who has been here before.”

  I stuck my head out the kitchen door and called Caps over. “Seen anyone new around in the last few weeks?”

  “Not myself.”

  “Someone has?”

  “Yeah. There was talk of someone hanging around the hall wanting to talk to Mrs. Bleich. A couple of the boys ran him off. She comes here to help our community, not suits who can afford to hire her.”

  A suit.

  “How many times did the boys run this person off?”

  “Two, maybe.”

  And for the first time since I’d shot him, I heard Mac’s voice loud and clear, “Maybe’s ass.” Guess he hadn’t gone after all.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Two?”

  “Could be three, no more than four.”

  “Persistent. Can you find someone who saw him or spoke to him?”

  “Sure.” He beckoned a young man over. He wasn’t more than sixte
en. “Bring me Carmine and Samuel.”

  Five minutes later two young men appeared in front of Caps. He told them to answer all our questions. They shuffled from foot to foot and kept their eyes lowered. I asked them about the stranger. They didn’t know his name. Sam called the office and asked for a few pictures of the family and one of the Unsub sent to his phone. First he showed them a picture of Mr. Bleich, just in case it was her husband visiting. Then all three of the Bleich boys. None of them was recognized. He showed them a photograph of the Unsub pulled from the surveillance footage of the jewelry store.

  “That looks like him,” Carmine said, then peered closer.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Suits all kinda look the same,” Carmine said with a lazy shrug.

  I showed the picture to Samuel again. “This guy?”

  “Maybe. I dunno. They all look the same.”

  “So a definite maybe?”

  Both nodded.

  I looked at Caps. I’d seen dogs make better witnesses. Come to think of it I’ve seen goldfish make better witnesses. He dismissed them saying they weren’t to talk to anyone about this and to be ready to answer more questions later.

  Movement by the door caught my eye. Uniformed officers entered the hall. I waved. Behind them, I saw the familiar dark jackets of the FBI Crime Scene Unit. Then I saw Cheryl Harris, our Medical Examiner. I waved. She waved back and joined us.

  “Cheryl,” I said, shaking her hand. “A time of death would be helpful.”

  “Are you staying?”

  I shook my head. “No, call me.”

  “Will do.”

  We didn’t do a lot of small talk. Cheryl followed the Crime Scene team into the office.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said to Sam. “We need to talk to the sons and ID the Unsub. Back to the bat cave.”

  On our way to the car, Sam handed me the Mp3 player he’d dropped into his pocket earlier.

  “Have a feeling you’ll want to listen to this,” he said.

  “You’d be right.” I shoved it into my pocket for later.

  Ten

  Complicated

  I left Sam trying to get an update from Lee and Kurt while I disappeared into my office and took a virtual look at the area around the jewelry store. We were dealing with someone who planned details. We had witnesses saying our Unsub may have been seen at the community center, asking to see Marika Bleich. Really, all we knew was that a man in a suit went looking for her a few times. I scanned the route the Unsub took from the jewelry store hoping to find an answer as to his whereabouts.