“I’m sorry, we haven’t met,” Lucy said. “I’m Lucy Kincaid.”
Riley grinned. “Riley Knight. I feel like I know you. My sister is Sonia Hooper.”
Small, small world, Lucy thought. She’d just worked with Sonia on a case. She was married to the ASAC in Sacramento, Dean Hooper.
“Nice to meet you,” she mumbled, feeling a bit out of sorts. She’d forgotten how well known Sean was here—he’d grown up in Sacramento, RCK started in Sacramento, he had friends all over the area.
John said, “If Rogan arrives before I get back, call me. No one is allowed to touch the van without me here, understood?”
“Of course,” Riley said.
“Jack Kincaid and Dupre’s partner already went in it this morning, which ticks me off, but that was before they called it in.”
John and Lucy continued walking another half block then turned left on 14th. The alley separated a block-long office building and a parking lot. The unstaffed parking lot had a machine where drivers pre-paid. The lot was about a third full.
“This is mostly for evening events,” John explained. “The Memorial Auditorium, the community theater, Music Circus—all walking distance.” He gestured to the building that took up half the block on the west side of 14th. “That’s the AG’s office.”
“Security cameras?”
“Likely, don’t know that they’d reach here. I’ll have someone call.”
He looked around the area. Neither of them saw anything out of the ordinary. They slowly walked down the alley. Three Dumpsters were lined up against the building on the right.
John pulled out his phone and dialed Ellen’s number.
It rang in the Dumpster closest to the street.
John pulled on gloves and Lucy followed suit. He cautiously opened the Dumpster and they both looked in.
Ellen Dupre was lying faceup on top of the garbage.
“Fuck,” John mumbled under his breath. He started to close the lid.
“Wait,” Lucy said.
She smelled garbage, but she didn’t smell decomp. If Ellen was dead since last night, there would be clear signs. But her body looked . . .
Lucy’s heart raced. “I think she’s alive! Help me climb in.”
John pushed the top open. It hit the brick wall and stayed. Lucy pulled herself up, stepped into John’s hands, and hoisted herself inside the Dumpster. There was only one layer of bags, some food but mostly paper and office garbage.
Carefully, she moved over to Ellen’s neck and pressed her fingers on the main artery.
At first nothing. But her body was pliable, warm. If she was dead, she hadn’t been dead long.
Then she felt a faint heartbeat.
“I have a pulse!” she said.
John was already calling for an ambulance.
Lucy wanted to remove her from the Dumpster but worried that Ellen might have a neck or back injury. She was fully clothed, shoes on. Dried blood matted her blond hair, on her right side. She could have been shot or hit or beaten. Her face was dirty, but unmarked.
There were no other visible signs of injuries.
She could have been here since last night, or since dawn. They needed a full time line of her night after her husband left the tactical van.
“Hold on, Ellen,” she said.
It didn’t take long for Lucy to hear an ambulance.
“What do you see, Kincaid?” John asked.
“Dried blood on her head, no other visible signs of injury. Her pulse is faint, but she is breathing on her own. I don’t know why she’s unconscious and unresponsive.”
Only minutes later the paramedics arrived. One joined Lucy in the Dumpster, and Lucy assisted with putting a neck brace on Ellen and sliding the board under her body. Then Lucy jumped out while the two paramedics pulled Ellen up and out, onto a gurney. They were on the phone with the doctor at the hospital and immediately started an IV, checked her eyes, pulse, blood pressure—which was very low.
“We’ve got her, Detective,” one of the paramedics said to John. “We’re taking her to the Mercy trauma unit.”
“Is Dr. Storm on duty?”
“That’s who we’re talking to now.”
“Good. I’ll be down as soon as I get this scene secured. Tell him this is my case.”
The ambulance left, and John said to Lucy, “Gabriel Storm is my brother-in-law, heads the trauma department at Mercy.”
“I swear, Sacramento is the smallest big city in the country.”
John looked around the area, his face grim, his eyes seeing everything. “Why was she here?” He glanced at his phone. “Crime scene is on their way. I don’t know what we’re going to get from the Dumpster or the van, but if there’s anything to find, my team will find it.”
Chapter Six
Sean arrived downtown just after ten that morning. He couldn’t park near the convention center; J Street was blocked at 13th Street, and a traffic cop directed traffic south on 13th. He’d expect this in a homicide investigation, not for an assault. He looked again at Lucy’s message:
We found Ellen Dupre unconscious, unresponsive, but breathing in a Dumpster off 14th and J. She’s en route to the hospital, awaiting status. Drone is missing.
That was thirty minutes ago.
He’d failed Ellen. He should have been here last night, running through the last tests with her. But his damn pride, his self-pity, his . . . what? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he didn’t want to be anywhere near the law enforcement conference. He didn’t want to talk to people, to smile, to pretend like everything was normal.
And Ellen was in the hospital fighting for her life because he felt sorry for himself.
He sent Lucy a text message that he was parking in the hotel garage and would meet her at the van. She responded almost immediately that Detective John Black with Sacramento PD would meet him there.
Nothing more, nothing less.
He’d fucked up. Big time.
Sean parked at the top of the garage. He stood at the edge and looked down below at the corner of K Street and 13th, the convention center to the east, the police vehicles to the north. He had to pull it together.
Ellen was a visionary and got as excited about new ideas like he did. He’d worked on her drone software project before he’d been arrested for murder; he had mixed feelings now working on anything that helped law enforcement track people. While on the one hand he knew that most cops would use it for lawful, warranted purposes . . . there were always a few bad cops out there.
He despised bad cops.
Sean shook the thoughts from his head. He wouldn’t be able to help Ellen if he didn’t focus on the task at hand. At doing what he was good at.
What, fucking things up? Because you really screwed things up with Lucy. You didn’t come home last night. You didn’t tell her where you were, what you were doing, just ran away like an asshole.
His fists clenched at his sides; why couldn’t he just make this all stop? Was he so weak that he couldn’t put the past in the past?
Or maybe he couldn’t stop thinking about his failures because he knew that Jonathan Paxton was right.
His phone vibrated. He looked at the message. It was from Jack.
Are you coming?
Lucy must have told him he was here. Shit.