She giggles. “No promises.” The door closes the door behind me.
I light up a smoke and sit down in the computer chair. I rewind the DVD to 11:30 back to when he first arrived at the club. He wanders into the club and sits at the bar for a full hour, tossing back shots. Dragoness saunters up to Robert and tries to seduce him. It takes a few tries, but she hooks him and leads the victim back upstairs and heads into her room, closing the door. Fast-forwarding to when he leaves the room, he storms out of her room alone, upset and crying. I note the time stamp on the video 12:30am.
The door opens, and I spin around in the chair. “Hey, Sadir. You’re just in time for the snuff film.”
“Lobos, what’s going on here?”
I shrug. “What do you mean?” I say, blowing smoke from my mouth.
“I mean no disrespect, but cut the crap okay. You’re on nickname bases with a known pimp, and you go upstairs, and you stay up there for an hour. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you left me down here while you went and got laid and you stink of Marijuana.”
I cross my arms, turning my eyes up to the ceiling. “Yes. I smoked some fucking weed. Big deal. You gonna snitch to the Rat Squad like a little bitch?”
“N-no, it’s just I think it’s strange to see a cop smoking weed and keeps an owner of a brothel as a friend is all.”
I turn back to the monitor. “Stay in this job long enough, and you’ll see stranger shit than that.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just we’ve been working together since Monday, and I don’t know anything about you.”
I turn back to the monitor. “You’re better off not knowing.”
“I don’t mean to pry. It just feels like I’m working with a stranger.”
I crane my neck. “Well, forgive me if I’m not Ms. Social Fucking Butterfly. The last partner I got to know, ended up dead.”
“I heard about your partner in the news. He was killed during a raid on the Order of the Infernus in Miami five years ago. You won the Medal of Valor for saving a bunch of kids.”
“Yes, the Devil worshiping cultist who believed if they sacrificed twelve kids, they would bring Satan to the earth, what about it?”
“I heard about all the rumors swirling around that raid. One rumor said, your negligence at that cult compound got your partner killed. The other rumors say, you two were ambushed, and you killed fifteen cultists with nothing but your shotguns and service pistols. Which of the stories are true?”
I glare at him over my shoulder. “Focus on the case. Dumb ass rookie.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to open up old wounds.”
I wipe the tears from my eyes. “Stuff your sorry up your ass.”
“Can I ask one more thing?”
“What?” I snap at him.
“Um… the Lieutenant told me you were a U.C in the DEA.”
“I’m not going into that shit with you. Focus on the goddamn case.”
“It’s okay, I understand.”
“Good! Can we focus on the goddamn case now?” I turn my attention back to the monitor and push the play button.
Robert staggers toward his car fumbling with the keys he drops them. He bends down to grab them. A man wearing all black and a matching ski mask wraps a wire around his throat. The victim struggles to get free, but it just makes the wire slice deeper. He pulls a heater as a last-ditch effort. The killer grabs the gun Stetson fires the weapon in panic, hitting nothing but the ground. His body goes limp from severe blood loss. The attacker slings him on the ground. His strangler saunters over to the camera and throws a taunting wave. Moonlight picks up Robert’s body and tosses it into his trunk. I mark the timestamp 12:43.
So I was off a few minutes.
“It’s confirmed the victim was killed at 12:43. Come on, we need to go rope off that crime scene and hope no one has destroyed any potential evidence.”
“Pretty cocky of him to wave at the camera like that.”
“Sometimes serial killers love to taunt the police like they’ll never get caught. But they all fuck up eventually.” That being said, I fear eventually will never come with this guy. The FBI will soon be along to snatch this case from me. Exiting at the rear entrance of the club, we stroll across the parking lot. “I recall from the tape he was killed right under a tree, and considering that is the only tree out here; I say we have a winner, Devi.”
“Good. Rope off the crime scene and get forensics out here.”
The Crime scene techs arrive and place yellow markers next to the evidence, snapping pictures of the bullet hole in the ground and a spent casing that rolled into a crevice between the grass and the parking lot. They snap a picture of a small handgun. The techs scan the area with a black light and find massive amounts of blood near the grass. The photographer takes a photo of the blood. A forensic tech marches up to me and lowers his mouth cover. “Alright, Detectives. We got the scene ready for you. We’re sending the blood to the lab to confirm it’s the victim’s. Also, we found a small-caliber handgun that was likely the victim’s. A single 9mm round was fired into the ground.”
“It’s the victim’s weapon he fired it in a failed attempt to kill the MK Suspect.”
“Thanks for clarifying it.”
“No problem. Anyway, have the results on my desk ASAP,” I say.
“Sure thing, Lobos.”
As we step under the yellow tape, Sadir turns to me.
“So, if you don’t mind me asking, why did you do it?”
“Do
