shuddered as she considered the worst-case scenario.
She also had to brief command staff on the incident. The agency was blessed with leaders who’d worked their way up through the ranks and understood many of the issues officers and detectives had to deal with. In this case they understood it was necessary to use serious physical force to overcome the disruptive prisoners. All anyone seemed genuinely concerned about was the detective’s injury, and that made Sergeant Zuni feel good about the department.
She heard a light rap on her doorframe and looked up quickly to see the senior internal affairs detective, Ronald Bell, standing in the doorway looking like a model who’d just walked off the runway. He was tall and handsome with light gray hair and a rugged smile, but what set him apart from all the other tall, handsome detectives was that he almost always wore extraordinarily expensive, exquisitely cut suits. Today he had a dark blue suit with a white shirt and pale yellow tie. He looked like one of the ads in
Bell said, “Awfully quiet around here?”
“Open homicide cases tend to keep the detectives busy.”
“I guess big-ass brawls do too.”
“Don’t make me go over my whole day. I wish I could have a Bombay Sapphire martini right this second.”
Bell said, “Sounds like you had a rough day.”
“Please tell me someone hasn’t made an official complaint that requires Internal Affairs to come down and look into this thing?”
“By all accounts your detectives did a great job. It wouldn’t hurt if they were maybe in a little bit better shape or had a couple more ASPs available. I heard your man Stallings took a pretty big blow to the arm from one of the tactical guys who had an ASP.”
“You know Stall. Something like that’s not gonna slow him down. He had a bruise, but he wasn’t complaining too much when he ran out the door to look for another missing girl.”
“I know John Stallings very well. I’m surprised he didn’t crack someone’s head open.”
“Although it may seem like it to you, he’s usually not the violent type.”
“I have several Jacksonville residents who might disagree with that analysis.”
“Have any of them ever filed a complaint?”
Ronald Bell raised his hands in surrender, stepped into the small office, and pulled the door quietly shut behind him.
Sergeant Zuni raised an eyebrow and said, “Is this something serious or are you going to say something romantic?” She stepped from behind her desk and reached to embrace her secret boyfriend. In the two months they’d been seeing each other she was certain no one had become suspicious. She didn’t want Bell to get in trouble for dating one of the sergeants in charge of the detective bureau. It was his job to investigate complaints against officers and detectives, and he was known as a ruthless enforcer throughout the department. But she’d seen another side of the fifty-four-year-old internal affairs investigator. Aside from being smart he was extremely sophisticated and had used much of the money he’d inherited from his mother’s side of the family to create a lifestyle in stark contrast to that of most of the cops in the agency. But it was the way he treated her that made her want to see him more and more. He made her feel like she was the only woman in the world and would listen as long as she wanted to talk about anything she wanted to talk about.
Bell said, “This is nice.”
“Too bad you’re in IA and I’m a conflict.”
“No one’s complained so far.”
“That’s because you’re used to keeping secrets.”
Bell said, “If I could, I’d shout it out so everyone would hear.”
Sergeant Zuni laughed for the first time all day. She liked this guy and what they had.
But the relationship was not without pitfalls. Sergeant Zuni saw the irony of her keeping a secret relationship with an internal affairs investigator while Patty Levine and Tony Mazzetti struggled to keep their burgeoning relationship under wraps. The sergeant had figured out the two detectives’ attraction to each other some time ago, but she didn’t like to meddle in other people’s affairs, especially two of the top producers in the bureau.
She stepped back from Bell and looked into his handsome face. “This isn’t a social visit, is it?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What’s up?” She knew better, even with her boyfriend, than to make specific inquiries. If Internal Affairs didn’t already know about it she wasn’t about to bring something to their attention. Even inadvertently.
“It is somewhat related to the fight this morning in the bureau.”
“In what way?”
“Narcotics is missing two hundred fifty of the Oxys they confiscated this morning.”
“And this relates to us how?”
“The missing pills were part of the evidence the detective was bringing in to sort out. As close as we can tell they had to go missing from somewhere up here and probably during the fight.”
“Have you been able to ask Dwight what he did with them?”
Bell shook his head. “He’s still being evaluated and is in and out of consciousness.”
“There was no one here but our detectives. No visitors, lawyers, or reporters. Just cops.”
“My first thought was some attorney had grabbed them while he was up here talking to a client, but when I checked all the rosters I saw no one had been up to the squad bay this morning.”
“So you really think one of the detectives stole seized evidence? You don’t think it’s more likely they just miscounted?”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out and it’s going to take a little more time. But I needed to give you a heads-up either way.”
“I appreciate that and I’ll try to show my appreciation later. But for now what’s our next move?”
Bell pulled his collar like he needed more air and said, “We’re gonna keep our inquiry strictly low-profile. We don’t want to screw up any cases, especially a murder investigation. The sheriff is conscious of any political fallout.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I have a hell of a lot of work to do.”
FIFTEEN
Patty knew she was expected to run the show during this interview. Even though Stallings was a veteran, with commendations and an obsessive interest in all the cases they worked, he knew when to step aside and let her handle things. Despite being a parent, Stallings recognized she’d be better at dealing with a teenage girl.
Unlike the other girls they’d interviewed during the day, Patty sensed this girl, Tonya Hazell, was frightened. She wasn’t sure if it was the intimidation factor of having to speak to detectives or something else, but there was no bravado or swagger in this girl.
Tonya, dressed in the school uniform, was small and delicate with intelligent green eyes and shoulder-length blond hair. She had given up looking at Stallings at all and now focused her attention on Patty. She answered the first several questions with mumbled yeses or nos as she appeared to be assessing Patty’s reliability.
Tonya said, “Yes, Leah told me she was going to run away. We talked about it for more than two weeks before she really did.”
Patty stole a quick glance at Stallings. “Do you know where she is?”
That’s when the girl started to cry, her tears quickly morphing into uncontrollable sobs as Patty yanked on the roll of paper towels sitting on the desk behind her and waited patiently as the girl dabbed her eyes and blew her nose with a deafening honk.
Patty knew that meant the girl didn’t know where Leah had gone, but she waited for an answer anyway.
Finally, Tonya looked up and said, “I haven’t heard from her since Friday afternoon when we said good-bye at school.”
