Guardian Of The Grove

“
S
tep on it
, Officer. I have a date for dinner tonight that I don’t want to miss.”

“Sure thing, Detective.”

To his credit, he didn’t even blink when I asked him to punch it. The lights on the top of the car flared to life, and he hit the accelerator. What I told him was true—I had my first date lined up for tonight. What he didn’t know was that it was my first date in months. God, I needed this. Being a detective wasn’t easy, being a female detective doubly so. Men seemed to expect me to work and then be available for whatever. That just wasn’t the way things worked with me. I worked odd hours, and a lot of them. Sometimes I had to leave in the middle of just about anything to get to a crime scene. Something was always going on in a city of this size, and we never had enough cops to go around.

We were almost to the station now. I could feel the call of freedom. Three more blocks until I got to enjoy my first weekend off in months. My sister had set me up with a guy. His picture let me know that he was easy on the eyes, and that was all I needed right now. If he had half a brain, that would be enough. In fact, for this weekend, I didn’t even need that.

Two more blocks until I was free. I couldn’t wait to get to my favorite cantina, crack open a couple of beers with a hot guy, and relax on the patio. The cool evenings wouldn’t last much longer; summer would be here soon. We seemed to only have two temperatures in this city, really damn hot, and perfect. By the time we hit June, we were going to be in the nineties even at night. You had to take advantage of the good weather while it decided to stick around.

The officer cut the siren as we rounded the last corner before the precinct. One block left and I was home free. If dispatch called me now, there was going to be hell to pay. Was this really going to happen? Was I actually going to make it? We rounded the last turn, and the gate was opening to the garage when the radio started to crackle. Goddamn it. I seriously couldn’t catch a break.

“Detective Velasquez, this is dispatch.”

“Shit!” I looked over at the officer as his face grew white under the heat of my stare. “Any way I can get you to forget you heard that?” He kept his hands on the wheel and slowly shook his head. “You’re right. Might as well turn around now. There wouldn’t be a call if we didn’t have to go somewhere.” The car slowly circled and headed back into the city. Seriously, after months of this shit, I just needed a break.

I grabbed the radio off the console. “Dispatch, this is Detective Velasquez.” I wondered just how they were going to ruin my weekend this time.

“Sorry to catch you coming in, Detective, but we have a priority double homicide.”

“Don’t be sorry, Mannie, just know that you single-handedly ruined any chance I had at a life, and that when I die old and alone, I’m going to take you with me.”

“I promise I tried to call another car first, but the lieutenant specifically asked for you on this case.”

Well, that was interesting. It wasn’t often that the lieutenant went out of his way to assign cases. We normally just got put on the next crime up. That meant something was going on. I didn’t like the feel of it, but that could just be because my weekend was already in the shitter. Mannie rattled off the address, and the officer flipped the siren back on. He accelerated into traffic, and I was back on the clock, just like that.

I didn’t feel like calling to cancel my date, so I whipped together a quick text, asking if we could squeeze in lunch on Saturday. I really didn’t want to let this one go. The job drove me, but a woman had needs, and this weekend had been all about satisfying them.

I couldn’t wait for my partner to get back on the job. Sure, it was nice to have a chauffeur, but I needed someone to bounce ideas off of, not just someone to drive me around. Someone who could take over the crime scene for a few hours while I snuck away for a hot date. In short, someone who had my back and understood the job.

We pulled into the driveway, and three units stood milling around while the crime techs and coroner were inside. Jesus, did we really need so many cops sitting around doing nothing? No one was going to disturb the scene in this neighborhood. It was too nice, and the people were too upscale to bother coming out of their homes. In fact, I didn’t see one neighbor outside gawking at us.

“Wait for me outside the door,” I told my driver. I knew he wanted to come into the crime scene, but the fewer people I had around, the easier it was for me to move around. I needed space to think; it wasn’t easy climbing inside the head of a killer. It was bad enough that I couldn’t walk the scene alone now. With tech and the morgue on hand, it would take hours before I could get an unobstructed view of the scene. Now it was full of people, but hey, we all had our jobs to do.

I walked up to the front of the house; it was a nice place. Two stories in a good neighborhood, nice front porch. The kind of home that would be great for raising a family. Unless, of course, you were this family. Then you were dealing with a tragedy. The officers outside were all standing around chatting. I hated having to break them up, but I needed them to be actually doing something or to get back out on patrol. Just another reason some of those uniforms liked to refer to me as detective Ball Buster. It wasn’t my fault the department was understaffed. We needed cops in the streets, not just sitting around shooting the shit.

“Hey, guys, move these squad cars to the street. Let’s make it easier for the coroner and techs to do their jobs. Also, we only need two cars here, so decide which one of you wants to head back to patrol. Make sure it isn’t whoever was first on the scene; I might have questions for you later.”

All of them moved to comply with a yes, Detective, on their lips. I knew more than a few of them were making faces or doing something else behind my back, but I didn’t have time for their bullshit. That was the problem working in a field dominated by alpha males—being one of the few female detectives didn’t sit well with them. They could all go to hell, though. I had one of the highest closure rates in the department and was well on my way to becoming Sargent Velasquez. That would really piss them off.

My phone beeped, and it was Latin eye candy texting me back. Saturday didn’t work, and he didn’t offer another time. Oh well, that’s the way a date crumbles. It looked as if I was going to have to find someone else to have beers with this weekend. Maybe I’d hit a couple of the bars by campus Saturday night and see if I could get myself into some trouble. One of the joys of being in a college town was there was never a short supply of hot young men primed for a night of no-strings-attached fun. Sometimes that was all a girl needed.

Before entering the house, I grabbed a pair of the plastic booties and slid on my black crime scene gloves. I probably wouldn’t be touching anything, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. I turned back toward my driver. “I won’t be long. We will need to come back here in the morning so I can walk the scene alone.” He made a face but hid it quickly enough for me to ignore it. I knew he wanted to get more out of this assignment than driving me around, and so far he had proved himself more than capable.

“After I walk the scene tomorrow, we can go through it one time together. You can tell me what you see, and I’ll let you know if it’s on track with what I am thinking.” His face visibly brightened. “But it’s going to cost you coffee. We can work out the details later, but make sure to have the case file with you when you pick me up in the morning.” He gave me a nod and moved to stand just outside of the door. This guy had potential, and if I could give back a little, then it was worth it. The city needed more good cops.

The inside of the house was just as nice as the outside. The furniture was newer, just like the house. It looked as if the people living here preferred for things to be comfortable over stylish. That was an idea I could easily get behind. Your home was your sanctuary away from the world. It was the place you could retreat to when everything else just seemed like it was too much. Being comfortable meant different things to different people, but I always loved sitting on a leather couch.

A picture on the wall showed a family of three. They looked familiar for some reason, but I couldn’t quite place them. Some memory tingled at the back of my mind, but it wouldn’t rise to the surface. All the smiles in the photos spoke toward them being a happy family. Just what in the hell had gone wrong? That was a gift of the job—after a while, you saw things in a half-jaded kind of way. If this could happen to them, then it could happen to anyone, at any time.

I kept moving through the house, trying to learn what I could about the victims. They had said double homicide, so I wondered just which two of them had died. My money was on the parents. If it had been the kid, then one of the victim’s family members would probably be around crying their eyes out.

I stopped next to the stairs; one of the crime techs was standing in the doorway, taking pictures. When he saw me, he lowered the camera and smiled.

“Gina, it’s good to see you again.”

Shit, it was Ryan. I really couldn’t catch a break. Yeah, we had dated for a couple of weeks a few years ago, and it didn’t work out. I didn’t run into him too often, but when I did, it still felt a little awkward between us. There wasn’t much to say about it; I was working all the time, and I didn’t get a chance to meet a ton of people. He was in good shape and funny; it seemed like a win. Too bad the video games and four cats seemed to be his priority. Granted, when I worked twelve-hour days, six days a week, I probably needed to find a man with a hobby. Dating another officer was out of the question, so I had branched out a little.

“It’s good to see you too, Nolan.” I used his last name to keep it simple and professional.

His smile didn’t even flinch. “Can you believe after all that happened to these folks, they ended up like this? It’s a tragedy. ”

“What are you talking about?”

“You remember that fire a few years ago, where the city thought it was arson but could never prove it. This house is the house they rebuilt. It seems like whatever happened back then finally caught up with them.”

I remembered the case he was talking about. The city fire department went after them for a long time but could never prove exactly how the fire had started. In the end, the family had received a pretty nice payout from the city and their insurance company. No wonder the lieutenant wanted me on this. It was going to be a high-profile case from day one. He always liked to get me out in front of the cameras, some kind of affirmative action bullshit. Making the face of the department a Latina and a woman did something to help the chief. It was a “scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” kind of system. Not to mention he would be able to toss me under the bus if I didn’t get this case closed quickly, keeping himself and his reputation squeaky clean.

Well, this weekend just went from bad to worse. The only small blessing I had going for me was that the media hadn’t caught wind of the case yet. We couldn’t shut them out forever, but maybe I could get one night of peace. When the reporters got ahold of this, it was going to be a nightmare. The case was just a little bit too high profile for my tastes, but when I nailed it, they would have to consider giving me that gold shield.

“Now I know why their faces looked so familiar.”

He snapped a few more pictures before moving out of the way. “Be careful, it’s messy in there.”

“Do you guys have everything you need?” It would be too much to hope that was the case, but if the lieutenant had time to call me in, maybe they had been here for a few hours already.

“We have to bag a few pieces of evidence still, but everything has been photographed. As long as you don’t touch anything, you can move around in there.”

“Thank you, Nolan.”

He shot me a quick smile and then shouted to his team. “Hey, guys, let’s take five. Give the detective here a chance to walk the room.” He looked back at me. “I haven’t forgotten that you like to walk the scene alone.”

“Thanks for doing this. I owe you one.”

“I’ll remember that next time I need a date to get my parents off my back.” He moved forward, I had the feeling I was about to a get a break down of the crime scene before I got my time alone.

God, Nolan was right—the kitchen was a mess. He stepped forward to explain the crime scene to her. One adult female found facedown here.” He said pointing to a spot in the middle of the kitchen floor. ”All signs point to her bleeding out from a cut, possibly the one we can see on her throat. The adult male was found on his back. The stool was knocked over, indicating that he was sitting on it when he was shot.” They took a few small steps into the room and it revealed a gunshot wound to the victim’s head. “The trajectory of the bullet and where the splatter went, seems to corroborate that theory, but we won’t know for sure until we can set up the lasers. His face looked bruised, so he was probably beaten first. Home invasion, maybe?”

Nolan stepped out of the room. “I’ll keep them busy out here as long as I can.”

“Thanks again, Nolan.”

I had five minutes to take in as much of this crime scene as I could. That would be all I would get tonight, so it had to be enough. The crime techs would wrap up later and have a preliminary report ready by the morning. That would give me something to look over when I came back to the house with my rookie in tow. For now, it was time to focus on the details. When I looked back at the photos later, I wanted these images burned into my head. The pictures were great, but nothing beat being immersed in the crime scene.

If it was a home invasion, where was the kid?”

No tracks in the blood, so whoever did this was careful, probably not a young kid, but you never knew these days. All of those kids watched
CSI
like it was going out of style. Until we could rule him out as a suspect, finding him was our number-one priority. My gut was telling me this would have taken more than one person to pull it off. Sometimes my hunches were wrong, but they had panned out enough that I knew better than to not listen to them.