The Rogue Element (Scott Priest Book 1) (2 page)

“Given the fact that we’re having this conversation, I’m assuming you consider me the right people.”

“Absolutely,” Hitchcock affirmed.

“And have you approached anyone else about this?”

“Only you.”

“Do you plan on approaching anyone else?”

Hitchcock looked at the bureaucrat for a long beat before answering. “Only if you decline.”

I could already sense there was a lot more they weren’t telling me. “So if I accept this assignment, I’d essentially be a task force of one.”

“The less people involved the better,” Fitzgerald insisted.

The full gravity of the conversation was finally starting to sink in and I suddenly found it difficult to breathe. “I’m a homicide detective, lieutenant. Isn’t this a tad above my pay-grade?”

“Yes it is. And that’s why you were the perfect person to approach,” Fitzgerald said. “You’re among the most trusted and respected members of the department. No one would ever see you coming.”

“And you don’t see anything wrong with asking me to betray that trust?”

“We’re not asking you to betray anything,” Hitchcock maintained.  

“You’re asking me to betray everything. You know as well as I do that if my participation in a corruption investigation of fellow officers ever got out, I’d be black-flagged for the rest of my life. There wouldn’t be another department in the entire country that would so much as sniff me.”

For the first time I saw something in the lieutenant’s narrow blue eyes that looked like hesitation. “It will never come to that.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because you aren’t actually investigating anyone. We are. All you’re doing is collecting intel that can be used to assist us.”

“Most of the guys out there would consider that being a rat.”

Hitchcock leaned in close. “Well in here we would consider it helping to rid our department of internal elements that could destroy it.”

“Again with the dramatics,” I said with a sarcasm designed to mask my mounting fear that the lieutenant was right.

“There is nothing dramatic about it, Scott.”

“Okay, so are you going to tell me what this internal element is?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you haven’t accepted.”

I sat back in my chair as a thousand thoughts simultaneously raced through my head. I couldn’t grasp onto a single one. “So what’s the first thing that happens if I accept?”

Fitzgerald answered. “We fully debrief you.”

“And how much time would I have to consider it?”

“Not a lot,” Hitchcock said.

“I need something.”

“Okay, twenty-four hours. That means we would reconvene here tomorrow morning at,” he glanced at his watch, “Seven forty-five.”

The room fell into silence. Hitchcock and Fitzgerald were clearly waiting for my reply, but I didn’t have one to offer them. As much as I tried to make sense of what they were telling me, the fact of the matter was that it made no sense.

There was a definitive protocol to follow when it came to internal police investigations, and what Hitchcock and Fitzgerald were asking me to do violated every conceivable aspect of that protocol. It also bothered me that neither of them could come up with a convincing answer as to why I was the one chosen to do this, whatever this was.

Hitchcock may have trusted me, but there were dozens of trustworthy men and women in the department. As far as I was concerned, nothing I’d accomplished in my two years as a homicide detective stood out as being head and shoulders above anyone else. There were no official commendations, no merit or leadership awards. I’ve never considered myself to be anything more than an average hardworking, hard-nosed cop who did his best to uphold the Priest lineage of hardworking, hard-nosed cops.

I tried to imagine my father sitting in this seat having this conversation. It wouldn’t have lasted longer than two minutes before Carl Priest either stormed out of Hitchcock’s office on his own or was led out in handcuffs. Either way, he wouldn’t have even entertained this nonsense, let alone taken part in it. The fact that I was still sitting here only confirmed something I’d known since I joined the academy nine years ago: I wasn’t made of nearly the same stuff as my father.

“I guess I shouldn’t bother to ask the obligatory ‘what’s in it for me’ question,” I said to no one in particular.

Fitzgerald responded. “You shouldn’t, because the answer right now would be nothing.”

Hitchcock shot him a fiery look. “You’d have the gratitude of a lot of very important people, not the least of which are the citizens of this city,” the lieutenant replied, apparently feeling the need to atone for Fitzgerald’s blatant rudeness.

“In all honesty, you’re the only person in charge whose gratitude actually means anything.” 

If the lieutenant was touched by the sentiment, he didn’t show it. “I need you to keep something in mind over these next twenty-four hours, Scott. And I can’t stress the importance of this enough.”

“I’m listening.”

“This decision is yours to make and yours alone. You’re not to discuss the details of this meeting with anyone, and that includes Detective Kimball. Is that understood?”

“I walked right by his desk on my way in here, so he probably knows I’ve been meeting with you. What am I supposed to tell him if he asks?”

“Make up something.”

“That’ll be easier said than done. We should have been at the Alvarez crime scene half an hour ago. He’ll have questions.”

“You mean Marisol Alvarez, the hotel maid?” Fitzgerald asked.

I turned to him with mild surprise. “How do you know about it?”

“Her name was leaked on the Mile High Dispatch website late last night.”

I pounded a hard fist against the arm of the chair. “Damn it.” 

“Why don’t you take a breath and give me a status update on the investigation,” Hitchcock said.

I blew out a loud sigh in an effort to dial back my frustration about the leak. “Nine hours in and there hasn’t been much movement. Kimball and I are heading back to the Four Seasons this morning to speak with more staff and guests. The hotel has been on near lockdown since early this morning and forensics is dusting every square inch of the place. We haven’t been able to speak to the victim’s family yet. Guess those assholes at the Dispatch decided to do it for us. Will somebody please shut them down already?”

Hitchcock wasn’t moved by my plea. “Do you need to be temporarily pulled off while you make your decision?”

I couldn’t help but glare at him. “I think I can handle it.”

Hitchcock and Fitzgerald looked at each other as if they had been expecting that answer.

“It might be best if you temporarily step back and let Kimball take the lead.”

“How am I supposed to explain that?”

The lieutenant shrugged. He clearly hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Tell him I’ve put you on a one-day reassignment, the details of which you aren’t at liberty to discuss.”

“And that’s not supposed to raise a red flag?”

“He’s right, Owen. It doesn’t take much to raise suspicions around here these days. It might be best to go about business as usual.”

Hitchcock deliberated the bureaucrat’s point, which by my estimation was the only sound one he had made so far.

“Business as usual,” Hitchcock finally relented. “But I still want you to give this decision the appropriate attention.”

“I will,” I replied as confidently as I could, though the resolve in my voice was no greater now than when the meeting started.

“Okay then. If you don’t have any other questions, you’re free to get back to it.”

“I do have one question, sir.”

“I’m listening.”

“Suppose my answer is no? Granted you haven’t told me much, but I now know that there’s a major problem somewhere within the department, possibly in every corner of it, and because I know this I feel like I’m in a compromised position either way I go. Say I bow out and someone else steps in. Can you guarantee this meeting won’t come back and bite me in the ass?”

Fitzgerald answered. “As we’ve assured you, your position within this department will not be compromised, whatever your decision ultimately is.”

“I have my doubts about that.” 

“He’s right, Scott,” Hitchcock said.

I had heard just about enough of how right the bureaucrat was. “I don’t even know who
he
is. Has
he
ever served in this department? Has
he
ever walked patrol with those guys out there? Had a beer with them? Cried at a funeral with them? Is
he
willing to take a bullet for anyone here?”

Fitzgerald met the verbal barrage with an unwavering stare.

“Are you finished?” Hitchcock asked in a voice that was beginning to lose its measure.

I bit down on my lip. “For now.”

“Maybe you don’t accept Mr. Fitzgerald’s assurances, but you damn sure need to accept mine. If you choose not to take part in this, the conversation we just had never took place. If you do decide to take part, we’ll do everything in our power to make sure you’re adequately protected. You have my word on that.”

“The fact that I’m entering into a situation that requires protection is what bothers me.” 

Fitzgerald sighed. “So does that mean your answer is no?”

“I was told I had twenty-four hours to make a decision, correct?”

The bureaucrat nodded.

“So don’t assume anything before then.”

“Fair enough,” Hitchcock replied. “Just know that I understand the gravity of what we’re asking you to do. I know why you’d be hesitant to do it. Most people in your situation would be. Hell, I would be. But you also need to understand what’s at stake. The men and women in that squad room, the good ones, the ones you work patrol with, have beers with, cry with, they’re in trouble. I know that sounds heavy-handed, but it’s true. There are people inside the department, people they work with every day, people they consider friends, who are doing things that threaten to destroy everything they stand for, everything this department stands for.”

Hitchcock stopped long enough to pull up a chair. “We told you there wouldn’t be a full briefing until you agreed to help us, but one thing I can tell you is that what happened to Detectives Graham and Sullivan was merely the tip of the iceberg. The man who shot them, the man we all assumed was one of us, was brought into the department for the sole purpose of carrying out black operations that ninety-eight percent of the people here never knew were being carried out. And there are more like him. I won’t engage in speculation about who is responsible for bringing in these rogue elements, but the rumors about who is involved and what their motives might be are very specific. People with far more reach than any of us are handling that aspect of the investigation. What we need most is someone who can come in on the ground floor; someone who can listen to the rumblings among the rank and file, see what’s happening street-level. The suits can’t do that. You can. Understand, we aren’t asking you to arrest anybody. We merely want you to actively observe and report to us. We’ll take care of the rest.”

I took in a deep breath and held it as I attempted to formulate a response. I was still holding it as I began speaking. “What exactly is it that I’m supposed to be observing, and how do I know when I’ve observed something that’s worth reporting back?”

Hitchcock and the bureaucrat looked at each other, something they only seemed to do when they were met with a question they weren’t prepared to answer.

“That will be fully addressed during your debriefing,” Fitzgerald finally said.

I simply nodded.

“Do you have any other questions?” Hitchcock offered.

If I thought the lieutenant would be even the slightest bit forthcoming in his responses, I’d have a million questions. As it stood now, I only wanted to get back to my real job. “Will you be around this afternoon in the event Kimball and I need to discuss Alvarez?”

“I’ll have to check my calendar, but I imagine I will be.”

“In that case, I’ll get back to it.”

Fitzgerald promptly stood up. “Thank you for your time, Detective Priest,” he said as he extended his hand.

I stared at it for a long time before extending my own. “When the lieutenant asks me to show up, I show up.”

“Let’s hope that’s really true.”

Overwhelmed by inappropriate thoughts that I desperately wanted to give voice to, I could only look at Hitchcock and nod as I walked out of his office. The lieutenant acknowledged me with a pat on the back that said ‘
thank you for not knocking the weasel on his ass
.’

CHAPTER 2

The nauseous feeling that came over me
before the meeting had returned full on by the time I made it back to my desk. My partner was gone, and I worried that he had hit the Alvarez crime scene without me.

I suddenly worried about a lot of things, not the least of which was what the next twenty-four hours would bring.

Before this morning, the course of my day as a Denver Police Department homicide detective had been an easily chartable one. Recent events had made the course a little more treacherous to maneuver, but I always knew where it would ultimately lead.

Once I left Lieutenant Hitchcock’s office, it was as if all the familiar guideposts had disappeared, with nothing left behind to steer me in the right direction. I suddenly didn’t know my place here. Would my days now be spent solving murders or observing my colleagues? Was I working for the citizens of Denver or the Attorney General’s office? Most importantly, why hadn’t I walked out of Hitchcock’s office the moment the word
rat
entered the conversation? I had yet to come up with a definitive answer for that one. What I did know was that I was already regretting the decision.

Eager to shift my focus, I sat down at a desk that was entirely too cluttered and searched for the Alvarez file. As I rifled through one useless manila folder after another, I made a mental note to see the department shrink about a possible hoarding disorder. Finally overwhelmed by the frustration of looking for a file that was clearly not on my desk, I was giving serious thought to sweeping everything into a recycle bin when I was stopped by the sound of a familiar voice.

“Looking for this?”

I turned around to see Detective Nathan Kimball standing over my shoulder, the Alvarez file in hand.

“Jesus, Nate. I’ve been looking all over for that.”

He snatched it back as I reached for it. “You were M.I.A. for so long I was about to head to the scene without you.”

“And do what? You couldn’t navigate your way through a McDonald’s drive-thru without me, let alone a crime scene.”

Kimball smiled as he dropped the file on my desk. “You spend half an hour in Hitchcock’s office and you come out thinking you’re Harry goddamn Bosch.”

“Somebody’s got to do the detecting around here.” 

“Well let’s get going, Mr. Detector. We’re already an hour behind schedule.”

“Sorry boss. It wasn’t exactly my fault,” I insisted as I rose to my feet.

Kimball walked up to me. Even at a solid six-one, two hundred and five pounds, I felt undersized next to his six-foot-four inch massive frame of pure muscle. Kimball played strong-side linebacker for the Colorado State Rams for two years before a hip pointer prematurely ended his career. Seventeen years after his last game, he still had a physique that most twenty-year-olds would envy, and the cast-iron toughness to go with it.

“Of course it wasn’t.” he hissed. He kept approaching until we were practically touching.

“What the hell are you doing?” I said as I nudged him out of my personal space.

“Checking to make sure the time with the lieutenant didn’t leave any brown spots on your nose.”

I was irritated by the implication, but knew I couldn’t show it. “I’m only interested if it can be the same shade of brown as yours.”

“You mean this chocolate mocha smoothness?” he mused as he stroked his clean-shaven cheek. “Not possible, my friend.”

“Some guys get all the breaks.”

“You get plenty of breaks.”

“Oh yeah? Name one.”

Kimball dug into his pocket and pulled out a set of car keys. “You get to drive.”

I snatched the keys out of his hand. “You’re generous to a fault.”

“Says my ex-wife every month after she cashes the alimony check.”

I laughed; something I desperately needed to do. Then I led the way past Hitchcock’s closed door and out of the squad room, hoping like hell that I’d find the guidepost I was still searching for. I hadn’t so far, despite the presence of my best friend in the department. And I was becoming increasingly certain that I would never find it again.

“Come on, Detective Kimball. Let’s go figure out who killed the maid.”

Kimball patted me on the back as we made our way to the elevator. “Nobody in the world I’d rather roll with.”

I smiled in spite of the suffocating knot that was forming in my throat.

This was going to be a long twenty-four hours.

*****

The presidential suite that Marisol Alvarez
spent her last moments of life in was the most elaborate residence that the Four Seasons had to offer. Measuring in at over 2,200 square feet it was nearly triple the size of my broom closet of an apartment, with more amenities in the kitchen alone than in all of the DPD district stations combined.

The homicide call came in at 9:40 last night and Kimball and I were the first detectives on scene. The awe we felt at the pristine opulence of the suite quickly faded at the sight of the dense blood spatter that covered most of the living room floor and furniture.

Marisol had been stabbed seventeen times in all. The medical examiner estimated that at least seven of those wounds were inflicted postmortem. Typical in a crime of passion scenario. Defensive cuts on her arms, palms, and thighs pointed to a struggle, which meant that she probably saw her attacker coming and had time to react. Unfortunately, her reaction wasn’t enough to prevent the severing of her carotid artery, the wound that most likely killed her.

Despite the blind rage that seemed to fuel Marisol’s assailant, they were clear-minded enough to keep traces of themselves to a minimum. Aside from a bloody partial shoeprint on the marble floor of the bathroom where a fellow attendant found her half-naked body, there was nothing left behind to tie anyone else to the scene: no fingerprints, no obvious DNA, and no murder weapon.

The lack of physical evidence was just one of the early obstacles we were facing. The lack of a motive was another. Marisol had worked for the hotel only six days, barely enough time to learn the layout of the rooms she was responsible for cleaning. If she had made any enemies during her time here, she had done so quickly and without any fanfare. None of the sixty-five hotel staff interviewed so far claimed to know her before she was hired. Most hadn’t spoken two words to her since. From what we could gather there was nothing at all remarkable about the thirty-seven-year-old Denver native, other than the fact that someone wanted her dead in the most brutal way imaginable.

When we arrived back on scene this morning, we were greeted by half a dozen crime scene techs, an army of uniforms patrolling every floor of the hotel, and a backup team from homicide.

Detectives Jim Parsons and Alan Krieger were two of the best minds in the unit; a fact that they wouldn’t hesitate to remind you of if you ever had the audacity to forget. They were also two of the most cantankerous bastards on the planet. A combined fifty-two years of daily homicide work can do that to a couple. Krieger was the first to approach us. The snarky expression that had come to define his time-weathered face was on full display.

“Nice to know the leads finally found time to show up,” he said before yelling over his shoulder to his partner. “Hey Jimmy, the guests of honor have arrived. Tell the boys in the hallway they can roll out the red carpet.”

I responded by giving Krieger the finger. 

“Love you too, Baywatch,” Krieger countered.

I could only shake my head. A few months into the job I was interviewing witnesses in a hit-and-run case when a woman walked up to me and made the random comment that I looked like one of the lifeguards from the TV show
Baywatch
. Kimball was the first to give me the moniker and it stuck. Krieger was the only one who still used it, and he only did so to get under my skin. Sadly, he succeeded every time.

“Don’t bust on him too hard, Al. Our boy was busy enjoying the rarified air of Hitchcock’s office,” Kimball said.

Thanks for selling me out partner
, was what I thought as I stared him down.

“No kidding?” Parsons chimed in as he waddled his way to the group. Unlike his counterpart, whose daily P90X routine kept him as fit as a man half his age, Jim Parsons looked every bit his sixty-one years plus a few. His high blood pressure and Type-2 diabetes did nothing to quell a Three Musketeers habit that currently topped out at four per day. His heart was probably the size of a canned ham and the only thing I could hope for was that I wasn’t around the day it finally exploded. “You weren’t invited Nate?” 

Kimball frowned. “I never get invited to meetings with the big dogs, Jimmy. You know that.”

“The Man still holding you down, eh Kim?” Krieger asked with his trademark smirk. “Aren’t there programs in place to prevent that kind of thing?” 

“As usual your lame-ass sarcasm adds nothing to the conversation,” Kimball countered with a smirk of his own. “But if you can find a program that would make Hitchcock not act like such a prick every moment of every day, please let me know about it.”

“Me too,” Parsons added as he fished around in his jacket pocket, no doubt hoping to catch a stray candy bar.

Krieger turned back to me. “So how were you lucky enough to earn an audience with his royal majesty?”

I kept my poker face tight. “He wanted to swap stories about the wife and kids, discuss plans for the weekend, compare spring gardening tips. Usual nonsense.”   

“Aside from the fact that you don’t have a wife or kids, you’re a social hermit, and you wouldn’t know a spring garden from a beer garden, I’m sure it was a great conversation.”

Krieger and Parsons laughed at Kimball’s quip like it was the funniest damn thing they’d ever heard. I joined in the laughter, hoping it would help push the conversation in a different direction. It didn’t. 

“You must’ve earned a big shiny gold star somewhere along the way, Scott,” Krieger hissed. “The only time I ever got called into the lieutenant’s office for a solo visit was when that cache of AK’s went missing in evidence. To this day I think the SOB believes I took them.”

“That’s because he knows all about your apocalypse-prepping nonsense,” Parsons chided.

“Zombie apocalypse-prepping to be exact. And it isn’t nonsense.”

I cut off Parsons’ asinine response before he even had the chance to think it up. “Can we at least
pretend
that we’re interested in doing our jobs here?”

Krieger’s brow furrowed. “We’ve done our jobs already. And because you Sallys were late, we did yours too.”

“Then by all means fill us in.”

Krieger hit me with a cold look before turning to Kimball. “Hotel security is combing through surveillance tapes as we speak. The cameras on this floor and the two floors below were malfunctioning last night, so all they have to go through is elevator, lobby, and parking garage footage. So far, the victim hasn’t turned up in any. Obviously neither has the perp.”

Parsons took over where his partner left off. “And I just finished a rather heated conversation with Natalie Glassman, the hotel manager on duty last night.”

I felt my face flush with embarrassment. The purpose of coming back this morning was to interview Ms. Glassman. The only thing worse than dropping the ball is having your backup pick it up and score. “How did that go?” was all I could manage.

“Heated,” was all Parsons could manage.

“Let’s just say she didn’t agree with our assessment that the entire hotel should be treated as a crime scene,” Krieger added.

“Does she really think she can just go back to business as usual after what happened here?” Kimball asked.

“That’s exactly what she thinks,” Parsons answered. “You’d figure all she would want to talk about is her dead employee. Instead, she spends the entire time complaining that the uniform presence is panicking the guests. I told her the guests should be panicked, and she should be too. She wasn’t as inspired by that as I’d hoped she would be.”

“So what are the chances that we can actually shut it down?” Kimball inquired.

“Logistically it wouldn’t be easy,” Parsons replied. “People would have to scramble to make different accommodations, and with the Shriners convention in town most every other room in the city is booked.”

“The longer people are allowed to come and go as they please, the more our potential for finding evidence is compromised,” I snapped back.

Parsons’ dark eyes narrowed. “Tell that to Ms. Glassman. Oh wait, you were supposed to do that already.”

“I’ve apologized for being late, Jimmy. What else am I supposed to—”

Krieger cut me off. “You were handling important business, Scott. We get it. But the next time you choose to shoot the breeze with Hitchcock instead of working your crime scene, all we ask is that you don’t do it on our time.”

“Chill out, Alan.”

Kimball’s terse directive was enough to get Krieger to back down. At that point, I decided that the next directive would come from me, and it wouldn’t be nearly as diplomatic.

Kimball continued. “Unfortunately we can’t force the hotel to completely shut down, so we have to focus on what we can control. Where are we at with interviews?”