“Well let’s see what Cosmo has for us.”
Tyson bounded up the steps taking two at a time. Jack followed after. When he reached the top he rapped his hand on the door. “Hey Cosmo.” As soon as his knuckles hit the door it opened, the hinges groaned. “Cosmo?”
When there was no response Jack reached for his piece and yanked Tyson back.
He used the tip of his boot to ease the door wide before stepping inside.
The place was a wreck. Furniture overturned, the computer smashed on the ground, blood covering the walls, and a large bowl-shaped impression in the drywall as if someone’s head had been rammed into it. Cautiously Jack stepped over a slew of computer cables and made his way inside. With a wave of the hand he told Tyson to wait as he pressed into the dark room. The drapes were still pulled closed. Glass crunched beneath his boot. Jack surveyed the room and noticed the light bulb was smashed. He worked his way into the one room that wasn’t immediately visible from the front door.
Thick blood was smeared on the door as he kicked it open.
Lying face down on the mattress was Cosmo with multiple kitchen knives jammed into his back. The bed was soaked in blood and his room was in complete disarray. The closet had been opened, and clothes tossed all over the ground. Drawers had been yanked out. Latches to boxes broken up. There was no message on the wall. Nothing left behind by the killer. Anyone could have been responsible.
Jack’s mind shifted to the computer, to the work Cosmo had promised to do.
“Is he in there?” Tyson asked.
He threw up a hand. He didn’t want the kid seeing that. He’d seen it enough. It didn’t affect him but he recalled what it was like to see a brutal killing. It stuck with him all the years even as others became nothing more than a faded memory.
Jack didn’t touch anything. He didn’t want his prints to be found.
He hurried over to the computer and used his foot to turn it over. The other side was open and by the looks of it the hard drive was gone. Both servers were also gone. He sifted through the mess on the ground but there were no notebooks.
“You know of anyone that might have wanted him dead?”
“He… uh… I…” Tyson stumbled over his words, shock setting in.
“Tyson.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean he did work for people in the city but he’d never run into any trouble. He was careful not to take on jobs that could put him in the crosshair.”
They continued looking through his apartment hoping to find something, anything that might… and that’s when he spotted it. His heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t seen it when he’d gone into the apartment as the door was pushed back but now with the door closed, he noticed it dangling from the door handle.
A necklace.
A necklace that belonged to Dana.
Jack snatched it up and looked at it closely.
Their initials were inscribed into the gold. A flash of memory. Her smile. Her kiss. Thank you, Jack. A Christmas present he’d given her back when he was living in Maine.
As he tried to make sense of what it was doing in Cosmo’s apartment, the wailing of sirens interrupted his thoughts.
“Jack,” Tyson yelled as he stood beside the window. Jack dashed over and looked out to see two black-and-white cop cruisers swerve into the lot below the apartment. In that moment his stomach sank. Someone had set them up. He grabbed Tyson’s arm and pushed him towards the back of the apartment and told him to get out of the rear window while he barricaded the front door.
Chapter 16
Minutes. Seconds even. Jack knew the clock was against them as he shoved a sofa across the hardwood floor to the back of the apartment’s front door. He then flipped over the computer desk, piling it on top just as he heard the clatter of boots striking steel steps on the way up to the door. Whoever had done this had set them up. They had to have been watching them. On one hand he needed to escape, on the other he didn’t want cops pursuing Tyson. Cops banged on the door.
“Santa Fe Police Department, open up.”
Jack continued to stack as many heavy items as he could find on the couch before retreating into the bedroom. He heard the sound of them smashing against the door trying to break in. Without looking at Cosmo’s body again, Jack bounded across the room to where the drapes were blowing in the window. As fast as lightning he climbed out onto a fire escape and scaled up to the roof.
“Hey, stop!”
Jack knew from experience not to look back. Generally cops wouldn’t shoot if they didn’t think you’d heard them or weren’t considered a threat. At the top of the fire escape he clambered onto the roof. By now he could hear even more sirens blaring. Within minutes the streets would be crawling with cops, and cruisers would be blocking off every means of escape. On the roof he was pleased to see Tyson was nowhere to be found. The last thing he needed was being held responsible for him or having to stare Shanice in
