A Family Affair
Disclaimer: Don't own them. Just playing. Enjoy!
Chapter 5.
Sara knew that the rude gesture she had just made at her stalker was childish, but she was in no mood to care. She was about to ask her friend Vicky Po, who just also happened to be the 11th Precinct's Medical Examiner, to do her an enormous favor. However, first she stopped by her and Danny's office to drop off the promised coffees.
Jake was sitting at her desk, apparently doing her paperwork for her, and Danny was diligently plugging away at his share.
"Hey, Pez! Thought you'd decided to play hooky for the day and maybe go and catch some rays in Central Park or something," Jake cracked when she walked in.
Sara winced at his innocent reminder of the thorny situation she was in. And to think, just over an hour ago she had been griping at having to do paperwork while thinking what a welcome reprieve the absence of new homicide cases was. Unbidden, Nottingham's deep, quiet voice as he made her an offer that she had found harder to refuse than she was comfortable with replayed in her mind. It seriously freaked her out to realize that all she would have had to do was nod, and the drug dealer who had threatened Joey Siri, Jr. would never trouble anyone in this world again. And Sara didn't even want to take the time out right now to think about the last thing the assassin had said to her. She had a feeling that if she let herself dwell on that little statement, she would zone out so bad, the trances the Witchblade occasionally threw her into would seem like a series of brief and pleasant daydreams.
"Yeah, partner. We were about to send out a search party," Danny chimed in, his dark eyes taking note of her badly disguised agitation.
"Yeah, well, there was, uh, a really, really long line," Sara said lamely, handing Jake his cappuccino and Danny his double espresso, heavy on the cream and sugar.
"Uh, okay," Danny said, not missing the fact that his longtime partner and friend was avoiding his eyes. "Thanks for the java."
"Yeah, thanks, Pez," Jake murmured, getting up from her desk.
"Don't mention. Um, look, I need to drop by Vicky's office for a hot minute. Call me down there if something comes up while I'm gone, will ya?"
"Sure thing, partner," Danny said, sipping his coffee appreciatively.
"Say hi to Ms. Po for me," Jake said, sitting back down.
"And what should I say when she says 'Jake who?'" Sara cracked as she headed back out the door.
"Aww, man. That's a low blow," Jake groaned.
Danny's amused chuckle was the last thing she heard as she made her way down the hall to the stairs.
Vicky Po was just finishing up an autopsy when her friend walked into the morgue.
"Hey, girlfriend. Wanna be a peach and grab that brain for me?" Vicky joked, her big brown eyes sparkling with laughter at Sara from behind the clear, protective facemask she wore.
Sara wrinkled her nose at the organ in question, which sat on a stainless steel scale.
"Uh, not right now," she said, looking away quickly.
"Wimp," Vicky teased. "What can I do you for, Detective Pezzini?"
Sara idly thumbed through the file that she assumed belonged to the victim who lay on a nearby table - well most of him did, anyway -- as the Medical Examiner finished up.
"I have a huge favor to ask you, Vic," she said, not really processing what she was reading.
"Ask away," Vicky said, removing her soiled latex gloves and smock and disposing of them in a container marked "biohazard." Taking off her facemask, she bent down, opened a file cabinet drawer, and took out her purse, from which she removed a tube of lip gloss.
"Gotta look good for the stiffs, eh Vic?" Sara teased, watching her begin to apply the lip gloss with the aid of a mirrored compact.
"Or a certain blond homicide detective," Vicky smirked, winking at her best friend. She nodded toward the corpse on the table. "He caught that case this morning, and I expect him to stop by for a progress report any minute now."
"Oh, ho! Well, it just so happens that a certain blond detective told me to say hi for him when I saw you," Sara informed her archly. "Wait a sec, we are talking about Orlinsky here, right?" she teased.
Now it was Vicky Po's turn to wrinkle her nose. "Does Orlinsky even have enough hair left on his head to determine its color?" she asked.
Sara cackled appreciatively at her friend's cleverness.
"Seriously, Sara. Did Jake really tell you to say hi for him?"
"Cross my heart," Sara said, suiting action to words, "and hope to die."
"Hmmm." Vicky's face took on a dreamy quality for a moment and a small, satisfied smile touched her full lips, but then she frowned, shaking her head as if to clear it. "Didn't you just say you needed to ask me for a favor?"
Sara sighed as reality intruded on what had been shaping up to be a very interesting bout of girl talk. After first glancing out into the hallway to make sure nobody was about to intrude on their privacy, she reached behind her and took out a small but surprisingly heavy bandanna- wrapped object from where it had been nestled in the small of her back under her leather jacket and t-shirt.
"I need you to run this for prints, but not to write up an official report on your findings," Sara said handing the gun to her friend.
Snapping on a fresh pair of latex gloves, Vicky carefully unwrapped the small but malevolent-looking weapon. Expertly, she flicked open the cylinder, holding the handgun up to the light and peering into the six-shot chamber. "Hmmm, .22-caliber, serial number filed off, of course," she murmured. She sniffed the weapon. "It's been fired recently, did you know that? Two rounds are missing."
Sara felt her heart sink. "No, I didn't."
"Do you wanna tell me how you came by it?" Vicky asked quietly, placing the weapon in a metal tray, which she then put in the bottom of the same drawer that her purse was in. Closing and locking the file cabinet, she turned and handed Sara's bandanna back to her.
Sara found herself pouring out her nephew's sordid tale to her dearest friend, leaving out Nottingham's part in it, of course.
"Wow. Poor kid. His heart's in the right place, that's for sure. And it was awful brave of him to come to you like he did," Vicky said when Sara finished talking. "I'll get on this as soon as I finish writing up my findings on that poor sonofabitch over there." She nodded toward the dead man once again.
"So, this is Jake and Orlinsky's vic, hunh?" Sara walked over and picked up the guy's toe tag, which read 'John Doe.'
"Yep. He came in bright and early this morning. Body was found dumped under the FDR drive, near the South Street Seaport."
"How'd he buy it?"
"Two shots to the head at close range with a small-caliber weapon."
"Hunh. Well, let me know what you come up with on that gun as soon as you can, okay?"
"Sure thing, girlfriend."
But as Sara turned to leave, her fingers brushed the cold, lifeless toe of the homicide victim, and the Witchblade immediately plunged her into a vision.
Sara was stunned to see her nephew's angry face as he confronted her.
"Get out of here, and if you know what's good for you, I won't catch you selling around here again," Joey snarled. In remarkably steady hands, he was clutching the very same weapon Sara had just given Vicky Po, the muzzle leveled at the chest of the person he was facing.
With a jolt, Sara realized that she was witnessing the events of last night from the perspective of the drug dealer --- the now very dead drug dealer lying cold on the table in the 11th Precinct's morgue.
Suddenly, a pale, blond, rail-thin girl wrested the gun from Joey's hands.
"Amanda, what the hell are you doing? Give it back!" Joey yelled.
"I know what I'm doing, Joey," Amanda said, waving the gun around wildly. "Give me your stash and whatever money you have on you, Paco, or I swear to God I'm gonna shoot you in the nuts," the girl said to the man whose eyes Sara was looking out of.
"Bitch, you must be crazy!" Sara heard a Spanish-accented voice say.
Suddenly, the unbelievably loud report of a gun shattered the night air. Luckily for Sara/Paco, the round was wild.
"Holy shit, Amanda! Are you nuts? Now, the cops are gonna show!" Joey swore.
"I'm not gonna miss, next time, Paco," Amanda said coldly, her badly shaking hands in all likelihood giving lie to her promise. "Now, give me your shit and the money!"
"You crazy bitch. You and your boyfriend are gonna pay for this. I'm gonna get another piece and find your asses," Sara/Paco snarled, emptying her/his pockets onto the ground.
"Now run away, you pussy," Amanda screamed. She raised the gun in the air and fired another shot. "Don't make me shoot your ass!"
With one last venomous look at the teens, Sara/Paco did just that.
The vision fast-forwarded. Sara glimpsed a street sign, and then found herself-as-Paco walking up the steps of a dilapidated tenement house. The number on the building said "303." There was a sticker on the padlocked plywood doors that read "Condemned, by Order of the Dept. of Buildings." But the padlock was not fastened. Sara/Paco unhooked it, and entered the building. She/he heard the chain rattle behind her/him as somebody, probably a lookout, put the chain and padlock back in place.
Voices could be heard coming from one of the apartments at the back of the first floor. Sara/Paco approached them.
"Hey, Paco, mi amigo! What have you got for me tonight?"
Four men sat around a table in what had been the apartment's kitchen. A battery-operated lamp lit the room, revealing a pile of money and drugs on the table. The man who had greeted Sara/Paco was Latino, in his mid- 30s, with a tattoo of a cobra on his forearm and a distinctive pock-marked face. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of tinted glasses. Two of the other men were African-American, and the fourth was Caucasian.
"Uh, we got trouble, Angel," Sara/Paco stammered nervously.
"'We,' hunh?" Angel said with a chilling smile. "Paco, my man, you not gonna give me bad news, are you? You know I don't like bad news."
Sara/Paco proceeded to blurt out the story, embellishing it to make it seem like Joey had a black belt in karate, and that that was the only reason he'd gotten the drop on him. Unfortunately, he also gave detailed descriptions of Joey and Amanda, plus their first names, to his boss.
One of the black men burst out laughing. "Dammmmn, Paco, you got shaken down by a bitch and her dawg, yo!" The other black guy and the white guy joined in the laughter.
"Shut the fuck up, G. I'm gonna get me another piece and make that little junky bitch and her boyfriend pay!" Sara/Paco snarled.
Angel hadn't laughed. In fact, all he'd done was stare at Sara-as- Paco, much like the snake whose likeness he had on his arm might stare at its next meal.
"How are you gonna pay for your new piece, hunh, Paco?" Angel asked, picking up one of the bundles of money and idly fanning the bills.
"Uh, I wuz hoping you could lend me the money. A new shipment of guns just hit the street, and my man can hook me up for $500."
"Let me get this straight, you come in here telling me you lost most of your product and all of your take to a couple of teenagers and you want me to loan you some money so you can buy another piece and go after them with it. Do I got it right?" Angel asked incredulously.
"Yeah, I'll get the little bitch to tell me where she stashed the stuff and the money before I do her. I'll get your shit back, Angel, I swear to God!" Sara/Paco sniveled.
"Now, Paco, we're all businessmen here. And every businessman knows that killing the clientele ain't good business. Have you met my boy, Tommy?"
Sara/Paco was a little thrown by the sudden change of subject. "Uh, no."
"Tommy, Paco. Paco, Tommy. Yeah, Tommy's gonna be taking over a nice piece of turf that I don't think is being worked to its fullest potential," Angel said, hooking an arm around the white guy's shoulders in false camaraderie.
"Oh, yeah? Where at?" Sara/Paco asked.
'Rut-roh,' Sara thought. Obviously, Paco was not the brightest. Or hadn't been.
"Avenue A, that four-block stretch south of Stuytown."
"Hey, man, that's my turf," Sara/Paco objected.
Suddenly, Angel pulled a handgun that was nearly identical to the one Sara had just given to Vicky Po.
"Consider yourself demoted," Angel said, and fired twice in rapid succession.
Sara/Paco had time for a brief shock of disbelief but, oddly, no pain, before the world faded to black.
Sara came back to the here and now with a small gasp.
The petite, curly haired ME was gazing at her friend in obvious concern.
"Are you all right, Sara? You kind of zoned out there for a minute."
"Uh, yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I'm just real worried about Joey. Tell me, did you get the slugs outta this guy's head yet?"
"Just fragments. At close range, the skull tends to make mincemeat out of small-caliber bullets like this guy caught. I might be able to get a ballistics report on one of the larger fragments, but it's doubtful. Why?"
"Oh, just wondering. I'll speak to you later, Vic."
"Later."
'Boy,' Sara thought as she slowly made her way back upstairs, 'this day just keeps getting better.' She knew that without bullets to compare to the weapon that that her friend now had in her possession, there was no way to prove that the gun hadn't been used to commit the murder. She also knew it wouldn't be long before Paco's body was identified. As she had told Joey and Nottingham that morning, the drug dealer was bound to have a rap sheet a mile long, which meant his fingerprints were on file. And if Vicky Po found Paco's fingerprints on the weapon, it wouldn't be long until she put two and two together. Sara couldn't in all good conscience ask her friend to keep the gun out of evidence after that.
She was going to have to have another talk with her nephew, who, ironically, had opted to report to school late rather than miss a trigonometry test. And she was also going to have to convince him to turn in his strung-out girlfriend. But first she had to figure out a way to reach out to someone in the 11th Precinct's narcotics task force. If she could orchestrate a bust on Angel without stepping on anybody's toes, with a great deal of luck, he just might still have the murder weapon on him, letting Joey and Amanda off the hook. Suddenly, she remembered Danny mentioning that a friend of his from his days in the academy worked in narcotics. Much as she hated having to involve yet another person in this mess, she knew that she could trust her partner never to betray her confidence.
"So, how's our favorite Medical Examiner," Danny asked as Sara came back in and hung up her leather jacket.
Sara was relieved to see that Jake had left. "As fine as always. Ya know, I do believe she has a thing for a certain ex-champion surfer with a bad haircut," Sara said, taking her seat.
"Oh yeah? Hmmm. Vicky likes dumb blondes. Who woulda thunk it?"
Sara glanced toward Captain Bruno Dante's office. She saw that McCartey and Orlinsky were in there behind closed doors. No doubt updating the captain on their current case.
Sara got up and closed the door to her and Danny's office, prompting a curious look from her partner.
"Danny, who do you know in narcotics you could call in a favor from?" she said.
The slim, handsome Asian detective's dark eyes studied his friend and partner for a moment before he answered her question. "You remember me telling you about Mike Morgan? We were at the academy together. He's a narcotics detective. What's up, Sara?"
"Think you could tear yourself away from your paperwork for about half an hour?" she asked wryly.
"I'll do you one better. How bout I buy you lunch? That way, there'll be no interruptions -- unless, of course, business picks up around here."
Sara grinned, grabbing her jacket. "Great. I like to take an early lunch from time to time."
More to come. Keep that feedback coming! It inspires me!
Disclaimer: Don't own them. Just playing. Enjoy!
Chapter 5.
Sara knew that the rude gesture she had just made at her stalker was childish, but she was in no mood to care. She was about to ask her friend Vicky Po, who just also happened to be the 11th Precinct's Medical Examiner, to do her an enormous favor. However, first she stopped by her and Danny's office to drop off the promised coffees.
Jake was sitting at her desk, apparently doing her paperwork for her, and Danny was diligently plugging away at his share.
"Hey, Pez! Thought you'd decided to play hooky for the day and maybe go and catch some rays in Central Park or something," Jake cracked when she walked in.
Sara winced at his innocent reminder of the thorny situation she was in. And to think, just over an hour ago she had been griping at having to do paperwork while thinking what a welcome reprieve the absence of new homicide cases was. Unbidden, Nottingham's deep, quiet voice as he made her an offer that she had found harder to refuse than she was comfortable with replayed in her mind. It seriously freaked her out to realize that all she would have had to do was nod, and the drug dealer who had threatened Joey Siri, Jr. would never trouble anyone in this world again. And Sara didn't even want to take the time out right now to think about the last thing the assassin had said to her. She had a feeling that if she let herself dwell on that little statement, she would zone out so bad, the trances the Witchblade occasionally threw her into would seem like a series of brief and pleasant daydreams.
"Yeah, partner. We were about to send out a search party," Danny chimed in, his dark eyes taking note of her badly disguised agitation.
"Yeah, well, there was, uh, a really, really long line," Sara said lamely, handing Jake his cappuccino and Danny his double espresso, heavy on the cream and sugar.
"Uh, okay," Danny said, not missing the fact that his longtime partner and friend was avoiding his eyes. "Thanks for the java."
"Yeah, thanks, Pez," Jake murmured, getting up from her desk.
"Don't mention. Um, look, I need to drop by Vicky's office for a hot minute. Call me down there if something comes up while I'm gone, will ya?"
"Sure thing, partner," Danny said, sipping his coffee appreciatively.
"Say hi to Ms. Po for me," Jake said, sitting back down.
"And what should I say when she says 'Jake who?'" Sara cracked as she headed back out the door.
"Aww, man. That's a low blow," Jake groaned.
Danny's amused chuckle was the last thing she heard as she made her way down the hall to the stairs.
Vicky Po was just finishing up an autopsy when her friend walked into the morgue.
"Hey, girlfriend. Wanna be a peach and grab that brain for me?" Vicky joked, her big brown eyes sparkling with laughter at Sara from behind the clear, protective facemask she wore.
Sara wrinkled her nose at the organ in question, which sat on a stainless steel scale.
"Uh, not right now," she said, looking away quickly.
"Wimp," Vicky teased. "What can I do you for, Detective Pezzini?"
Sara idly thumbed through the file that she assumed belonged to the victim who lay on a nearby table - well most of him did, anyway -- as the Medical Examiner finished up.
"I have a huge favor to ask you, Vic," she said, not really processing what she was reading.
"Ask away," Vicky said, removing her soiled latex gloves and smock and disposing of them in a container marked "biohazard." Taking off her facemask, she bent down, opened a file cabinet drawer, and took out her purse, from which she removed a tube of lip gloss.
"Gotta look good for the stiffs, eh Vic?" Sara teased, watching her begin to apply the lip gloss with the aid of a mirrored compact.
"Or a certain blond homicide detective," Vicky smirked, winking at her best friend. She nodded toward the corpse on the table. "He caught that case this morning, and I expect him to stop by for a progress report any minute now."
"Oh, ho! Well, it just so happens that a certain blond detective told me to say hi for him when I saw you," Sara informed her archly. "Wait a sec, we are talking about Orlinsky here, right?" she teased.
Now it was Vicky Po's turn to wrinkle her nose. "Does Orlinsky even have enough hair left on his head to determine its color?" she asked.
Sara cackled appreciatively at her friend's cleverness.
"Seriously, Sara. Did Jake really tell you to say hi for him?"
"Cross my heart," Sara said, suiting action to words, "and hope to die."
"Hmmm." Vicky's face took on a dreamy quality for a moment and a small, satisfied smile touched her full lips, but then she frowned, shaking her head as if to clear it. "Didn't you just say you needed to ask me for a favor?"
Sara sighed as reality intruded on what had been shaping up to be a very interesting bout of girl talk. After first glancing out into the hallway to make sure nobody was about to intrude on their privacy, she reached behind her and took out a small but surprisingly heavy bandanna- wrapped object from where it had been nestled in the small of her back under her leather jacket and t-shirt.
"I need you to run this for prints, but not to write up an official report on your findings," Sara said handing the gun to her friend.
Snapping on a fresh pair of latex gloves, Vicky carefully unwrapped the small but malevolent-looking weapon. Expertly, she flicked open the cylinder, holding the handgun up to the light and peering into the six-shot chamber. "Hmmm, .22-caliber, serial number filed off, of course," she murmured. She sniffed the weapon. "It's been fired recently, did you know that? Two rounds are missing."
Sara felt her heart sink. "No, I didn't."
"Do you wanna tell me how you came by it?" Vicky asked quietly, placing the weapon in a metal tray, which she then put in the bottom of the same drawer that her purse was in. Closing and locking the file cabinet, she turned and handed Sara's bandanna back to her.
Sara found herself pouring out her nephew's sordid tale to her dearest friend, leaving out Nottingham's part in it, of course.
"Wow. Poor kid. His heart's in the right place, that's for sure. And it was awful brave of him to come to you like he did," Vicky said when Sara finished talking. "I'll get on this as soon as I finish writing up my findings on that poor sonofabitch over there." She nodded toward the dead man once again.
"So, this is Jake and Orlinsky's vic, hunh?" Sara walked over and picked up the guy's toe tag, which read 'John Doe.'
"Yep. He came in bright and early this morning. Body was found dumped under the FDR drive, near the South Street Seaport."
"How'd he buy it?"
"Two shots to the head at close range with a small-caliber weapon."
"Hunh. Well, let me know what you come up with on that gun as soon as you can, okay?"
"Sure thing, girlfriend."
But as Sara turned to leave, her fingers brushed the cold, lifeless toe of the homicide victim, and the Witchblade immediately plunged her into a vision.
Sara was stunned to see her nephew's angry face as he confronted her.
"Get out of here, and if you know what's good for you, I won't catch you selling around here again," Joey snarled. In remarkably steady hands, he was clutching the very same weapon Sara had just given Vicky Po, the muzzle leveled at the chest of the person he was facing.
With a jolt, Sara realized that she was witnessing the events of last night from the perspective of the drug dealer --- the now very dead drug dealer lying cold on the table in the 11th Precinct's morgue.
Suddenly, a pale, blond, rail-thin girl wrested the gun from Joey's hands.
"Amanda, what the hell are you doing? Give it back!" Joey yelled.
"I know what I'm doing, Joey," Amanda said, waving the gun around wildly. "Give me your stash and whatever money you have on you, Paco, or I swear to God I'm gonna shoot you in the nuts," the girl said to the man whose eyes Sara was looking out of.
"Bitch, you must be crazy!" Sara heard a Spanish-accented voice say.
Suddenly, the unbelievably loud report of a gun shattered the night air. Luckily for Sara/Paco, the round was wild.
"Holy shit, Amanda! Are you nuts? Now, the cops are gonna show!" Joey swore.
"I'm not gonna miss, next time, Paco," Amanda said coldly, her badly shaking hands in all likelihood giving lie to her promise. "Now, give me your shit and the money!"
"You crazy bitch. You and your boyfriend are gonna pay for this. I'm gonna get another piece and find your asses," Sara/Paco snarled, emptying her/his pockets onto the ground.
"Now run away, you pussy," Amanda screamed. She raised the gun in the air and fired another shot. "Don't make me shoot your ass!"
With one last venomous look at the teens, Sara/Paco did just that.
The vision fast-forwarded. Sara glimpsed a street sign, and then found herself-as-Paco walking up the steps of a dilapidated tenement house. The number on the building said "303." There was a sticker on the padlocked plywood doors that read "Condemned, by Order of the Dept. of Buildings." But the padlock was not fastened. Sara/Paco unhooked it, and entered the building. She/he heard the chain rattle behind her/him as somebody, probably a lookout, put the chain and padlock back in place.
Voices could be heard coming from one of the apartments at the back of the first floor. Sara/Paco approached them.
"Hey, Paco, mi amigo! What have you got for me tonight?"
Four men sat around a table in what had been the apartment's kitchen. A battery-operated lamp lit the room, revealing a pile of money and drugs on the table. The man who had greeted Sara/Paco was Latino, in his mid- 30s, with a tattoo of a cobra on his forearm and a distinctive pock-marked face. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of tinted glasses. Two of the other men were African-American, and the fourth was Caucasian.
"Uh, we got trouble, Angel," Sara/Paco stammered nervously.
"'We,' hunh?" Angel said with a chilling smile. "Paco, my man, you not gonna give me bad news, are you? You know I don't like bad news."
Sara/Paco proceeded to blurt out the story, embellishing it to make it seem like Joey had a black belt in karate, and that that was the only reason he'd gotten the drop on him. Unfortunately, he also gave detailed descriptions of Joey and Amanda, plus their first names, to his boss.
One of the black men burst out laughing. "Dammmmn, Paco, you got shaken down by a bitch and her dawg, yo!" The other black guy and the white guy joined in the laughter.
"Shut the fuck up, G. I'm gonna get me another piece and make that little junky bitch and her boyfriend pay!" Sara/Paco snarled.
Angel hadn't laughed. In fact, all he'd done was stare at Sara-as- Paco, much like the snake whose likeness he had on his arm might stare at its next meal.
"How are you gonna pay for your new piece, hunh, Paco?" Angel asked, picking up one of the bundles of money and idly fanning the bills.
"Uh, I wuz hoping you could lend me the money. A new shipment of guns just hit the street, and my man can hook me up for $500."
"Let me get this straight, you come in here telling me you lost most of your product and all of your take to a couple of teenagers and you want me to loan you some money so you can buy another piece and go after them with it. Do I got it right?" Angel asked incredulously.
"Yeah, I'll get the little bitch to tell me where she stashed the stuff and the money before I do her. I'll get your shit back, Angel, I swear to God!" Sara/Paco sniveled.
"Now, Paco, we're all businessmen here. And every businessman knows that killing the clientele ain't good business. Have you met my boy, Tommy?"
Sara/Paco was a little thrown by the sudden change of subject. "Uh, no."
"Tommy, Paco. Paco, Tommy. Yeah, Tommy's gonna be taking over a nice piece of turf that I don't think is being worked to its fullest potential," Angel said, hooking an arm around the white guy's shoulders in false camaraderie.
"Oh, yeah? Where at?" Sara/Paco asked.
'Rut-roh,' Sara thought. Obviously, Paco was not the brightest. Or hadn't been.
"Avenue A, that four-block stretch south of Stuytown."
"Hey, man, that's my turf," Sara/Paco objected.
Suddenly, Angel pulled a handgun that was nearly identical to the one Sara had just given to Vicky Po.
"Consider yourself demoted," Angel said, and fired twice in rapid succession.
Sara/Paco had time for a brief shock of disbelief but, oddly, no pain, before the world faded to black.
Sara came back to the here and now with a small gasp.
The petite, curly haired ME was gazing at her friend in obvious concern.
"Are you all right, Sara? You kind of zoned out there for a minute."
"Uh, yeah, yeah. I'm fine. I'm just real worried about Joey. Tell me, did you get the slugs outta this guy's head yet?"
"Just fragments. At close range, the skull tends to make mincemeat out of small-caliber bullets like this guy caught. I might be able to get a ballistics report on one of the larger fragments, but it's doubtful. Why?"
"Oh, just wondering. I'll speak to you later, Vic."
"Later."
'Boy,' Sara thought as she slowly made her way back upstairs, 'this day just keeps getting better.' She knew that without bullets to compare to the weapon that that her friend now had in her possession, there was no way to prove that the gun hadn't been used to commit the murder. She also knew it wouldn't be long before Paco's body was identified. As she had told Joey and Nottingham that morning, the drug dealer was bound to have a rap sheet a mile long, which meant his fingerprints were on file. And if Vicky Po found Paco's fingerprints on the weapon, it wouldn't be long until she put two and two together. Sara couldn't in all good conscience ask her friend to keep the gun out of evidence after that.
She was going to have to have another talk with her nephew, who, ironically, had opted to report to school late rather than miss a trigonometry test. And she was also going to have to convince him to turn in his strung-out girlfriend. But first she had to figure out a way to reach out to someone in the 11th Precinct's narcotics task force. If she could orchestrate a bust on Angel without stepping on anybody's toes, with a great deal of luck, he just might still have the murder weapon on him, letting Joey and Amanda off the hook. Suddenly, she remembered Danny mentioning that a friend of his from his days in the academy worked in narcotics. Much as she hated having to involve yet another person in this mess, she knew that she could trust her partner never to betray her confidence.
"So, how's our favorite Medical Examiner," Danny asked as Sara came back in and hung up her leather jacket.
Sara was relieved to see that Jake had left. "As fine as always. Ya know, I do believe she has a thing for a certain ex-champion surfer with a bad haircut," Sara said, taking her seat.
"Oh yeah? Hmmm. Vicky likes dumb blondes. Who woulda thunk it?"
Sara glanced toward Captain Bruno Dante's office. She saw that McCartey and Orlinsky were in there behind closed doors. No doubt updating the captain on their current case.
Sara got up and closed the door to her and Danny's office, prompting a curious look from her partner.
"Danny, who do you know in narcotics you could call in a favor from?" she said.
The slim, handsome Asian detective's dark eyes studied his friend and partner for a moment before he answered her question. "You remember me telling you about Mike Morgan? We were at the academy together. He's a narcotics detective. What's up, Sara?"
"Think you could tear yourself away from your paperwork for about half an hour?" she asked wryly.
"I'll do you one better. How bout I buy you lunch? That way, there'll be no interruptions -- unless, of course, business picks up around here."
Sara grinned, grabbing her jacket. "Great. I like to take an early lunch from time to time."
More to come. Keep that feedback coming! It inspires me!