“Alright,” Capelli said, nodding at Axel’s photograph, which just so happened to be a mug shot from earlier in the year. “Our victim is Axel Franklin, twenty-two. Four prior arrests, all drug-related misdemeanors—possession, distribution in small amounts. He pled out on all four charges.”
“So, not exactly a choir boy,” Garza said, but Hale countered quickly.
“That doesn’t mean he deserved to get stabbed.”
“Somebody out there disagrees with that,” Liam said. “We just need to figure out who. And why.”
Sinclair nodded, his stare firm on the case board. “Did Dade get anything off the canvass?”
“Negative,” Liam said. Her report had been in the database as soon as he’d logged in this morning. “Half the neighbors didn’t answer their doors, and the other half said they saw and heard exactly nothing. There’s some blood on the sidewalk in front of his place. On the doorknob, too, so…”
“That tracks with him being stabbed somewhere else, then coming home,” Isabella finished.
“Can we walk the path of the blood back to an origin point?” Hale asked, and Capelli nodded.
“That’s sometimes more difficult than it sounds, with public streets and sidewalks, but the forensics crew is working on it. Given the severity of the injury, chances are high he was either stabbed very close to home or dropped off nearby.”
Maxwell tried, “Any street cams we can pull from to see which direction he came from? Maybe catch a break there to at least see when he got home or if anyone was with him?”
“The closest one is at the corner of Rutherford and Winchester,” Capelli said, clacking away quickly to pull up the view. “But that’s two blocks away from Franklin’s place. I doubt we’d get much.”
Damn it. This case was already chock full of dead ends, and they’d just started.
Not that it was going to stop Sinclair. Or any of them, really. “Pull it anyway, just in case. Let’s take a look at his cell records and scour his socials, too,” Sinclair said. “There’s got to be something there besides these calls to Carmen. And what about the nine-one-one call?”
“Not made by Axel,” Liam said, and hell if that didn’t add yet another thread of WTF to the whole thing.
“Capelli, reach out to dispatch and see if we can track that call,” Sinclair said. “Someone clearly knew Axel needed help. I want to know who.”
Capelli nodded. “Copy that. I’ll see if we can get a recording, too. Even we hit a dead end with dispatch, there’s a chance I could get something off the call itself.”
If anyone could tease details from an anonymous call, it was definitely Capelli. The guy’s brain was a freaking wonderland. “Great,” Liam said. “Let’s do this.”
He and Isabella divided up the cell phone records while Garza, Hale, and Maxwell took Axel’s social media accounts. Liam let the rhythm of work smooth over his frazzled focus, organizing the information in front of him, looking for commonalities, anything at all that would line up…
“I’ve got something,” he said, his pulse lunging as the connection solidified in his mind. “This number, here”—he sent it to Capelli, who put it up on the case board—“belongs to a Dante West. There are a bunch of calls between the two, going back at least a year. Axel called him five minutes before he called Carmen the first time. The call lasted four minutes.”
“Okay,” Hale said slowly. “So, Axel had likely just been stabbed at that point. Dante is a friend, someone he trusts. You think he called him for help?”
“It’s plausible.” A theory clicked together in Liam’s head, piece by piece. “Axel’s up to something illegal, can’t go to the hospital because they’ll call the cops, but he knows he needs help. Calls Dante.”
“Dante knows Carmen somehow, thinks she can help,” Garza added. “Gives Axel her number.”
“But she’s at work and doesn’t answer.” Another light bulb went off in Liam’s head, sparking bright, and he turned back to his keyboard. “Capelli, what time did that nine-one-one call come in?”
He answered without looking. Perks of an eidetic memory. “Eight fifty-two PM.”
Liam scrolled through the phone records. “Dante called Axel back at eight fifty, and the call only lasted for a minute.” His heart dropped. “There’s no record of a nine-one-one call from Dante’s phone, though.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t make it,” Sinclair put in. “It just means he didn’t do it from his own cell phone. Smart move if he’s covering for Axel.”
Capelli nodded, doing some scrolling of his own. “The nine-one-one call traces back to a burner cell. I’ll work on finding out where and when it was sold, but for now, the timing certainly suggests Dante made the call. His LKA is on Granville Street in North Point.”
Sinclair didn’t even hesitate. “Hollister, you and Isabella go pick him up. Maxwell and Hale, keep tabs on Axel’s condition. See if you can get an update from Remington Mem. Garza, you and Capelli work that burner phone and anything else you can find on Dante and Axel. I want to know what we’re looking at here.”
A chorus of “copy that” went up around the room. Isabella pushed back from her desk, but something lingered in Liam’s brain, refusing to let his ass leave the chair.
“What?” Isabella asked. “I know that look. What’s bugging you?”
Later, Liam would have to remind himself to work on his fucking game face. For now, he let his gut guide his hands over the keyboard, his calm taking a hit as he found a phone number he recognized all too well.
“Two weeks ago, Dante called Carmen. The conversation lasted over three minutes. The next day, she called him back and they spoke for another five. Which means two things.”
Isabella lifted her brows in silent question, and damn it, Liam didn’t know which of the truths to hate more.
“Carmen knows way more than she’s telling us, and there’s a good chance she’s either involved in this mess or in danger.”
4
Dr. Miranda Astor knew dozens of reasons a human body would cease to function. Some of them were brutal—exsanguination, suffocation, crush injuries, advanced disease. Some of them were quick, done in a blink with no chance for survival. Others still were quiet, their true cause a mystery, especially if no one looked past the surface.
One thing was sure. If Miranda meant to kill someone, they died. This was not, unfortunately, a trait shared by her husband, Royce Gannon, and God damn it, was competence really that difficult?
“It seems we have a problem,” Miranda said, arching a brow at Royce from the antique Queen Anne wingback chair behind her desk. The Throne, Royce jokingly called it, thinking he was charming. And to others, she supposed he was. Royce had the flawless manners and ease that could only be bought with inherited money and a yacht-load of privilege. Blue eyes that carried his smile when he meant for them to. The classic blond-haired, fit-bodied handsomeness readily found in GQ magazine, although he was gracefully leaning into those laugh lines and tasteful threads of silver beginning to appear in his hair. It was all too easy for a man like Royce to dismiss things like eleven thousand dollar desk chairs with a laugh and a knowing wink.