“This doesn’t have the feel of the typical government turf fight.”
“It has the feel of criminal collusion.”
Her phone buzzed. It was Puller.
He said, “This case has thrown another curve at us.”
“Why, what happened?”
“Teddy Vincenzo was found dead in his cell this morning.”
“What! How?”
“Prelim is suicide or drug overdose. They found him dead when they were doing a head count.”
“You can’t believe that.”
“No, I don’t believe it. I checked his records and photos of him when he went into prison. Not a needle track anywhere on his person, no tooth, nostril, or gum decay, no indication that he was a user. And when we saw him in person, he had no signs of being a user. Second, and most importantly, the timing is a little suspicious.”
“Don’t they have cameras in the prison?” asked Pine.
“They do. I asked about that. Unfortunately, the camera in question was not in operation. They apparently have a maintenance backlog.”
“That’s highly convenient. And if they were doing their head count, he died presumably early this morning, but you only found out recently.”
Puller said, “I doubt they care about keeping me in the loop. I only found out because I was working another channel to get back in to see him. That’s when I was told it was a no-go because he was dead.”
“Damn, that is definitely a curveball all right.”
“So they took out the father,” said Puller.
“Which means the son now sits squarely in the crosshairs.”
“We need to find Tony Vincenzo fast, before he bites it, too,” he said.
“FYI, we picked up a tail today. Whether it was at the Blakes’ home or at the school where we went to see if anything there might have precipitated what happened, I’m not sure. But it was a silver Mercury Marquis with New Jersey state government plates.”
“You get the tag number?” Puller asked.
Pine read it off to Puller from Blum’s phone screen.
“I’ll check that out.”
Pine said, “The people I spoke to, including Blake’s mother, said the cops think it was some gang thing, maybe an initiation. But these same people were also pretty sure Jerome didn’t even know how to fire a gun, much less make a shot like that last night.”
“It all stinks. The local cops have pretty much closed the case. They’re not looking anywhere else.”
“You know we could have been the targets last night, right?” pointed out Pine.
“The thought had occurred to me, yes.”
“His mother said he was going back to school to work on a robotics project, but that wasn’t true. And he lied about messing up a test to explain away why he was worried when he got home from school. And then an old friend of Jerome’s told us that Jerome had been approached by some guy at school, and it made him upset and nervous. I’m trying to run down a lead on that now.”
“What if someone got to him and made him show up in the alley, gave him a gun, and told him to run after he heard the shots?”
“How could they make him do that?” wondered Pine.
“That’s for us to find out.”
“Have they even confirmed that the gun he had was the murder weapon?”
“Not that anyone’s told me,” said Puller in disgust.
“Wait a minute, who’s doing the post and forensics? Surely CID people.”
“All I can tell you is that the local cops took the gun and Jerome Blake’s body and left us with McElroy’s remains.”
“But, Puller, how could that happen? A CID agent was the vic; that makes it your case, or at the very least gets you in the loop.”
“I made that argument last night and this morning and ran into a stone wall. Something about working with local cops to build trust and camaraderie.”
“That’s bullshit,” snapped Pine.
“It is bullshit. And my superiors up the line at CID think the same thing. But apparently orders on this came from up high, maybe past the uniforms and into the land of the suits.”
“What in the hell is going on here, Puller?”
“A cover-up of epic proportions. And for that to happen, there has to be a matching motivation. On a scale of one to ten, I’d put the possibilities here squarely in the double-digit range.”
“We need to find out what that is.”
“I hope I get the chance.”
Pine’s jaw eased down. “You mean—”
“I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if I get pulled from the case.”
“What will you do if that happens?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. This has only happened to me once in my career. I never expected that it would happen again.”
“What did you do when it happened the first time?”
“Something I shouldn’t have,” he replied.
“And what will you do if it does happen again?”
Puller didn’t answer.
Chapter 17
SUPERMAN MIGHT HAVE JUST gotten a dose of kryptonite,” said Pine quietly as she put her phone down. “He’s afraid he’s going to get pulled from the case.”
Blum absorbed this worrying information. “Anything else?”
“Yep, and it’s a stunner. Teddy Vincenzo’s dead. They say it’s a suicide or a drug overdose. Puller obviously doesn’t believe it. And neither do I.”
“I gathered that he was dead from the snatches of conversation I heard.”
“And the local cops have taken over the Jerome Blake case and they have the gun. John was left with McElroy’s body and that’s it.”
“Will he let that stand?”
“He got pushback from high up, perhaps beyond the military.” She glanced at Blum. “The suits outrank the uniforms in our system.”
“Well, it seems the cover-up has started, big-time.”
“I think it started a long time ago, actually.”
“What do we do now while Puller is trying to figure this out and we wait to get the photos for our witness to look at?”
“I’ve got a resource I can call on.”
“Who’s that?”
“The FBI has an RA in Trenton,” said Pine. “I know one of the agents, Rick Davies. Let’s see what he can find out for us.”
She brought Davies up on her list of phone contacts and made the call. Davies answered, and she told him the situation and what she wanted.
“You officially engaged in this?” Davies asked. “I thought you were in Arizona.”
“I was there when the shooting happened. I’m working with Army CID on the case.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll see what I can find out. Just to warn you, the Trenton cops positively do not like feds sniffing around their backyard.”
“Show me a local cop who does.”
She put down the phone and looked over at Blum.
“Now what?” asked Blum.
“Until we hear back from Puller or Davies or the school principal, we focus on another Vincenzo. Ito.”
Blum put her hands together and looked attentive.