“Bad news, sergeant,” she said.
“Hang on.” Huizenga put up a hand and turned her lasers back on me. “That’s it, Alex. We’re done here.”
I hadn’t been left out of a Major Case Squad conversation since I could remember. The whole thing had me steaming mad, but there wasn’t much choice.
I didn’t go far, though. Instead of heading back to my desk, I stopped right outside Huizenga’s door and listened in. It’s not a move I’m especially proud of, but like I said, it wasn’t about me. It was about the victims, and their families, and maybe most of all, the potential victims still to come. All those people deserved every resource we had to offer, and at the risk of tooting my own horn, they weren’t getting it.
“What is it, Jessica?” Huizenga asked.
“We just got word from CIC about two floaters in the Potomac. They washed up on Roosevelt Island about an hour ago. One young white male, shot in the head and stabbed all over the groin. One young white female—”
“Don’t tell me. Blond. Three carefully placed stab wounds. Bad haircut.”
“Unfortunately, yeah,” Jacobs said.
“And you’re saying they were found at the exact same time?”
“That’s the freaky little kicker to the whole thing. The two vics were handcuffed together in the water. Whatever that means.”
I took a deep breath. It meant that our two Georgetown killers were back in business together. More than ever, from the sound of it.
I heard Huizenga’s chair push back, and some jangling keys. “Does Valente already know?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“Call him. I’ll notify the chief. And tell whoever’s on the scene not to touch a damn thing.”
When Jacobs came out, she glared at me but kept moving. Ten minutes later, all off-duty Major Case Squad personnel had been called in, and the office was empty. Except for me, of course. I was left back to answer the phones and twiddle my thumbs, like some kind of lackey in a cage. Again.
I really wasn’t sure how much more of this I could stand.
CHAPTER
80
AS SOON AS I HAD THE OFFICE TO MYSELF, I PUT IN A CALL TO BREE.
I knew she was working a gang shooting over at the Garfield Terrace projects in Northwest. She’d left the house early that morning when the call came in. Hopefully, she’d be wrapping up soon and could go take a look at the scene on Roosevelt Island—or at least, get a little closer to it than my radioactive ass was ever going to get.
“I’ve still got about an hour to go here,” she told me. “But I can drive by after that, if it helps.”
“Anything helps,” I said. I was determined to track this case, one way or another. “See if you can find Errico Valente. He’ll keep you in the loop, if anyone will.”
Working the same homicide—much less several of them—was something Bree and I had set out to avoid when we got married. It only made family life that much harder, in terms of being around for the kids and keeping things running smoothly at home. But somewhere along the way, between the Ava situation, and Ron Guidice, and now my own troubles at work, the rules of the game had shifted.
And for better or worse, we make a pretty good team. I like working with her.
After that, I spent the next few hours alone on the desk, taking calls and mulling over everything I knew about these cases.
Whatever our killers were getting out of their double homicides, it was clearly working for them. Two handcuffed victims in the river was a step up from a body dump in Rock Creek Park. It was staged. They were getting into it now.
And staged seemed like the right word. It was as if they were putting on some kind of show with all of this. For us? For each other? For the world?
Who knew? It was all just questions in a vacuum, while I hung there on the desk, answering call after call.
Finally, around midafternoon, I heard back from Bree.
“I just got here,” she said. “And I’m already back at the perimeter. D’Auria tagged me out before I could even get a look at the bodies.”