“Hey, I don’t pretend to understand the method to Sinclair’s madness,” Liam joked smoothly, although, yeah, he had to admit, it did feel a little weird.
“Me, either. But I’m not exactly blowing him off when he calls,” Isabella said. Turning, she murmured what was probably a quick explanation to her husband, Kellan, then kissed baby Elijah twice before looking back at Liam. “Ready?”
“Always,” he said. Leaving some cash with Hale to settle his tab, he led the way to his Ford F-150, glad that he’d stuck to his one-drink rule. Not that he didn’t enjoy cutting loose every once in a while, but overindulging usually opened the door for a whole lot of emotional chaos to rear its ugly head. Ninety-nine percent of the time it wasn’t worth it, and anyway, if he’d thrown back more than half a beer, he wouldn’t have been able to respond when the team needed him to.
“Okay,” Isabella said, pulling her seat belt into place and plugging the address into the GPS. “I’ll let Sinclair know we’re en route.”
Liam did his share by radioing dispatch to do the same. They made their way to the scene fairly quickly, the city streets having long since quieted down after rush hour. The June air had cooled after sunset, but was far from chilly. Liam was plenty comfortable in his T-shirt, and he made sure his weapon and badge were secure on his belt as Isabella radioed dispatch to let them know they’d arrived.
“Huh,” Liam murmured, concern trickling through his rib cage as he got out of the truck and took in the scene. “This is an awful lot of response for a garden variety assault call.”
Isabella nodded, her eyes sweeping from left to right in a similar assessment. Two patrol cars and an ambo sat parked at off-kilter angles in front of a block of older row homes, lighting the street up like a rock concert. A small crowd had gathered on the crumbling pavement, with a patrol officer making sure the entryway to the second row home of four was cordoned off by bright yellow tape just as two paramedics rushed out the front door with a gurney.
“Whoa!” Isabella jumped into step with the paramedics, one of whom Liam recognized as firefighter/paramedic Lucy deCosta, from Station Seventeen. “Hey, Lucy,” Isabella said. “You moonlighting?” Everyone else on A-shift was off tonight. Including Isabella’s husband, Kellan.
“Pulling a double,” Lucy said with a nod that sent her black corkscrew curls bouncing. “But this guy’s hurt pretty badly. Nasty stab wound to the upper torso, and it’s not exactly fresh. He’s lost a lot of blood,” she added as the man groaned in pain past the oxygen mask Lucy had put over his face. “We’ve got to hustle.”
Isabella looked torn, but Liam didn’t hesitate. “Go with him and see if he can tell you anything. I’ll check things out here and call you.”
“Copy that.” Isabella picked up Lucy’s brisk pace and followed her to the ambo. Turning toward the row home, Liam made his way up the dilapidated steps and over the threshold. Nearly every light in the place was on, but it still didn’t do much to illuminate what had happened. The front room served as both a foyer and living area, housing a grungy sofa and small coffee table littered with the crumpled wrappings from nearly a dozen gauze pads, along with half a roll of medical tape. Calling the place sparsely furnished was a gift—the sofa and coffee table were pretty much it as far as décor went. There weren’t any signs of a struggle either here or in the tiny kitchen beyond, although the blood-soaked towel jammed over the equally stained sofa cushions didn’t point to anything good. Whoever this victim was, he’d been bleeding for a while.
Which begged the question: why try to self-help a stab wound—and a grievous one, at that—rather than going to the hospital?
“Ah, Detective Hollister,” came Officer Lucinda Dade’s voice from the back of the kitchen. “Glad Sinclair was able to find you. Is Detective Walker here?”
Dade looked around for Isabella, but Liam shook his head. “She went to the hospital with the victim,” he said, worry tingling at the back of his neck. “Why?”
“The victim’s name is Axel Franklin,” Dade said. “Ring any bells with you?”
Liam took a run through his mental files and came up empty. “Not offhand.”
She nodded, jutting her chin at the front room. “Best we can tell, he was injured somewhere else. There’s a good amount of blood here, as you can see, but no spatter, no weapon left behind. Also, no signs of a struggle, either here or upstairs. In fact, there’s no blood upstairs at all. But there are traces on the sidewalk and on the front doorknob, and that trail that leads from the door to the couch, right here.”
Dade pointed to the drips on the carpet that she’d already marked off with tape, and hell if this whole thing didn’t send Liam’s red flags waving in the wind. There were only a handful of reasons someone with a grave injury wouldn’t go straight to a hospital, and none of them were good.
He started with the easiest. “Any outstanding warrants?”
“No, but he does have a sheet. All misdemeanors. Nothing violent.”
The plot thickens. “So, whatever this guy is involved in is bad enough to make him come home after being assaulted rather than getting medical help,” Liam murmured, and wait... “Who called nine-one-one?”
It took a lot to stump Dade, who had been on the job since before Liam had graduated middle school. Still, she blinked. “That’s a good question.”
“Which means there’s no good answer,” Liam said, and here, Dade shook her head.
“I may not know who called nine-one-one, but I know who didn’t. In fact, it’s why you’re here.”
“Okay.” Liam drew the word out, steeping it in his confusion as he asked the sixty-four thousand dollar question. “And why is that, exactly?”
Dade held up an evidence bag, passing it over to Liam. Nestled inside was a slip of paper with a phone number scrawled on it, bloodied at the edges. “Axel Franklin had this in his hand when we got here. He didn’t call nine-one-one, but he did try to call that number three times in the last twenty minutes. Each call lasted about fifteen seconds.”
She held up another evidence bag, this one containing a cell phone, and Liam raised a brow. “No screen lock?”
Dade let one corner of her mouth drift up. “I’m a cop, not a magician. No. No screen lock.”
Liam huffed out a soft laugh, grateful for the tension buster. “Fifteen seconds, huh? That’s hardly long enough for a conversation.”
It was long enough to get someone’s voicemail, though, and maybe even to leave a quick message. Liam looked at the number more closely, something familiar tugging at the edges of his memory that he couldn’t quite locate. “Do we know who the number belongs to?”
Dade’s black brows lifted. “Thought you’d be able to tell me that, Detective. Seeing as how she’s one of yours. Or, at least, one of Detective Walker’s, anyway.”
“One of…” Liam’s mind spun, catching like a record scratch a few seconds later.
No. No, no. No fucking way. It couldn’t be.
With hands he willed not to shake, he pulled his own phone out of his back pocket, scrolling through his contacts. A…B…C…