His First Surrender (Stonewall Investigations Miami 3)

“The lab has to test it, but we think it’s cocaine and ketamine,” Melissa said behind me. “Think the drugs had a part to play in this?”

“A robbery gone wrong? I don’t think so… this seems more personal. A robbery would have been a shot to the head, and they would have run off with all of this. No, this was someone who had feelings for Jesse. Twisted ones. Dark ones.”

“And what do you think about that?”

Melissa pointed to above the bed. At first I thought it was just more blood splatter, but then it dawned on me. I wasn’t looking at a spray of blood; I was looking at a symbol, drawn with the blood.

Above the bed, the blood still dripping, there was an ellipse, about half the width of the headboard and seemingly placed directly above the center of the bed, blood having dried as it dripped down the crusted white walls.

“Could it be a signature?” Melissa asked, moving aside as another detective walked out with one of the bags of cocaine. “You don’t think this is the start of something, right?”

“No,” I said, although I wasn’t entirely sure of my own answer. “It looks more like a message than a signature.”

“A message saying what?”

We both looked at the circle of blood, neither of us coming up with any answers.

I did know one thing, though: I was going to get to the bottom of this, one way or another.

11

Sam Clark

I slept for a grand total of two hours. I woke up, half sitting and half lying down on my parents’ couch inside their tiny one-bedroom apartment, their three cats staring expectantly at me, as if I had a bag of food hiding behind my sore back. I wiped the drool from my mouth and the sleep from my eyes, and for a flicker of a second, I dumbly assumed that all of yesterday had to have been some kind of crazy dream. There was no way I had gotten into a fistfight, went on a date, and got home from said date to find my best friend being framed for murder.

There was no way, right?

Right… No. That all actually happened.

I’ve got to talk to Hazel.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine the night she’d been put through. I grabbed my phone off the scuffed white coffee table and sat up on the couch. A slant of morning sunlight filtered through the center of the closed blinds, their heavy gray fabric blocking the rest of the light.

First, I called the Miami Police Department, who were as helpful as me calling the weatherman. They wouldn’t give me any information except for what jail Hazel had been taken to. That sent me down a rabbit hole of “hold, please” and “one minute” while I was transferred around like a hot potato. I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for someone to get ahold of Hazel, or at least tell me exactly where and when I could see her.

Finally, someone answered me with useful information. “Hazel is being held in the FDC of Miami. The Federal Detention Center,” she clarified.

“Wait, she’s not at the Women’s Detention Center?”

The lady on the other end of her phone clicked her tongue. “Says here the person you’re looking for is at FDC. Birth name is Paul Velasquez, correct?”

Oh no. No, no, no.

My stomach twisted itself into a knot. Hazel had been taken to a male facility, even though she was a transwoman. She didn’t belong in there. The harassment she must have been put through, or worse… “When’s the soonest I can see her?” I was already putting on my sneakers and tying the laces.

“You can visit him—”

“Her,” I said pointedly.

“You can visit before two today.”

“Bail. How much is her bail?”

“Bail is set at…”

I could hear her clicking the mouse. Whatever it was, I knew then and there that I had to pay it. Hazel didn’t have rich family; she wouldn’t have anyone to go to besides me. I’d pay it, however many hundreds it cost me.

“Hazel’s bail is set at $25,000.”

I stuttered before I spat out, “$25,000? Are you freaking kidding?”

A powerful stab of sadness hit me right in the chest. That was way more than I was assuming to pay. It didn’t matter how much bodily fluids I donated, I wasn’t coming up with that kind of money.

Maybe if I sell my car. And I can try to sell… no, that won’t be enough. Bail bondsman. I can go to one of those. Like a loan, I’ll just pay it off. Maybe once she’s found innocent, it’ll get thrown away. Is that how it happens? Can tha—

“Hello? Sir? Do you need anything else?”

“No. No, thank you.” I hung up, my thoughts still racing in a thousand different directions. Both my parents, who had been quite scared when I woke them up in the middle of the night, were still knocked out, my dad’s snores sounding like loud foghorns from behind their closed bedroom door. I wrote up a quick note on a yellow sticky-note pile they had sitting on the crumb-dusted kitchen counter.