Photograph
"Open up, I know you're in there!"
Angela looked through the peephole even though she recognized Miguel's voice. She wanted to see how mad he looked.
Somewhere between "you slept with my wife" and "you slept with my daughter."
This should be fun.
Angela opened the door; Miguel didn't wait to be invited in, slamming the door shut behind him.
"How did you find me?" Her tone was hostile.
He was condescending. "I'm a detective. I detect." He looked around. "Nice place. Who's Jason Truman? Your new boyfriend?"
"My lawyer."
"*That* Jason Truman? Remind me never to piss you off."
Miguel then proceeded to piss her off.
"I heard about the little stunt you pulled Wednesday night. What the hell were you thinking?"
Angela was hotly defensive. "What? I wasn't anywhere near the chop shop then." She still felt awful about what had happened -- she didn't need to take any crap from Miguel over it.
"So what? You almost got caught." She *did* get caught -- just not by the authorities. "Do you have any idea how much heat is on this right now? You're damn lucky your friend is keeping his mouth shut about you. You know he's gonna take a murder rap for you?"
This news took the wind out of Angela's sails. "But it was self-defense. I mean, he was defending me," she said. "You've gotta help him."
"You've gotta be kidding. This is not a parking ticket. He killed a man."
"He saved my life. I have to help him. I'll make a statement, I'll testify, just tell me what I have to do."
"Are you kidding? They're already looking for you. Remember, technically you're still a fugitive of justice."
Huh? Angela thought that after the Labor Day incident she'd been cleared... She began to wonder why Miguel was here. Her eyes darted to the bedroom where she kept her sapphires.
"Relax. I'm not here to arrest you. But you really put me out. When I heard about it, I had to fight like hell to get assigned to the case. You know you left your blouse at the scene. They were gonna run it for DNA. I had to lose it. Now I gotta pay off the first officer on scene to say when he wrote his report he confused two different cases. Do you have any idea what this is costing me, not just in money but in reputation?"
"I'm sorry. But what about Harold?"
"Oh, so he has a name. What is he, your pet bum?"
"He's my friend," Angela said, giving Miguel an indignant glare. "If you won't help me clear him, I'll go to the police station and do it myself."
"Don't be stupid," Miguel said harshly. "Look, I'm already treading on thin ice here as it is. Just me being here, if anybody knew... I could lose my badge. I mean, it's my case. Be glad that the bum-" Angela glared again; he tried again- "Be glad that *Harold* is taking the rap for you. Hell, for him it's an improvement -- at least now he'll have three squares and a roof over his head. It could be years before he gets the injection, and then he'll be in a better place."
Angela's eyes started to tear. "Isn't there something you can do? You lost my clothes; you could..."
"Now wait a minute. Do you know what you're asking?" Miguel took a deep breath. "Do you have *any* idea what you're asking me to do? The victim's blood on his clothes, on his hands... Jesus, Angela, he still had the fucking hammer! And it's all been logged and tested already -- even if I could 'lose' that much evidence and keep my job, it's too late."
"But they hurt him too. Isn't it self-defense?"
"He was in the middle of committing a felony breaking and entering. It's manslaughter at best. Life in prison. And that's up to his lawyer and the DA."
Welled-up tears now began flowing freely down the young woman's cheeks. "There has to be something we can do," she sobbed.
Miguel's face softened. He crossed over to her, putting a comforting arm around her shoulder. "Shh, don't cry honey. I'll think of something. Come here, sit down."
They sat down on the couch; she leaned into his chest, weeping. "I didn't mean for it to happen. Everything was going okay and then suddenly something went wrong and I couldn't keep them off me and they tied me up and started... doing things to me... an' then Harold came in an' fought 'um off me, an' he untied me, an' then there was all this blood an' one of 'um wasn't moving an' Harold said to get outta there an' I jus' ran... he saved me an' I jus' left 'im there an' now he's in jail an' he's gonna die an' it's all my fault 'cuz I was stupid..." Angela trailed off into soft sobbing.
After a moment, Miguel said "I have an idea." Angela raised her head off his chest. Her eyes looked into his with a desperate pleading. He looked off into the distance, very serious. "This is just off the top of my head, but I *think* it'll work. If he was outside and he saw them go in and saw what they were doing, and they went outside and *dragged* him inside to keep him from talking, then it would be self-defense."
Miguel stood up suddenly and went to the window, as if looking outside helped him think.
"Their lawyer's gonna fight it like crazy, though. He's gonna wanna know why the bum's story changed. I'm gonna need a witness." After a moment's hesitation, he snapped his fingers and turned back to Angela. "I got just the guy. He owes me a favor. He'll say whatever I tell him to say." He looked into her eyes. "It'll work, but I'm goin' way *way* out on a limb for you, baby. You owe me. BIG."
Angela didn't like the sound of that, but if Miguel could fix her screw-up and get Harold out of trouble...
"Harold won't go to prison?"
"Hell no, baby, if this works the way I think it will, he'll get a formal apology from the department." Miguel smiled in self-congratulation. It seemed he didn't just have a knack for creative police work -- he had a hunger for it.
"All right," Miguel thought out loud. "Dave doesn't get off work till ten, so I've got plenty of time to set this up. He can say he heard about Harold being up for murder and felt bad and decided to come forward, even though it'd get him in trouble with his girlfriend for being in that part of town so late." Angela raised an eyebrow; Miguel explained: "Downtown hooker row is just two blocks away, honey; didn't you notice them?" She shook her head. "I guess your eye for crime is selective."
Angela brushed aside the slight. "So are you sure this is going to work?"
"Hey, baby, this is Detective Miguel Rubio you're talking to. I am the master. Other cops just enforce the law -- I make sure *justice* gets served. By the way, you did manage to bust a major meth cook supply operation. So it wasn't a complete loss. Just don't forget, you owe me."
"As long as it's to help someone else, I'll do whatever you ask."
"Sure, baby. Now, in all this traipsing about the city, did you find time to get over to the chop shop?"
Angela bristled. "Yes."
"Do you have photos?"
"Yes. Here." She pulled the memory card out of the little camera.
"Hold on. Gimme the whole camera, I want to look at them here." She handed it over, then moved around to stand next to him so she could see too. She knew the camera had some kind of "review" mode, but she hadn't been able to find it herself, so this was her first look at the photos.
Miguel started thumbing the little camera, pausing briefly between stabs at the buttons to grumble.
"I can't see," Angela said, hoping he would angle the camera more toward her.
"There's nothing to see. Most of the pictures didn't come out. Did you have it in infrared mode?"
"I think so. For some of them," she replied meekly.
More angry button-stabbing. More grumbling. Then finally, a splotchy green image. "Here we go," he said. "I guess it took you a while before you remembered to set the mode to infrared. Can't really make anything out, though." He thumbed a couple more times, squinting between each one.
"That's quite a rig you've got; I'd like to see it some time."
"What do you mean?"
"The angle of this shot." He showed her the viewscreen. "You must be a hundred feet up." Angela had figured two hundred -- not that she carried a guage. "Not much out that way that's that tall, you must be out on the middle of, what, a thousand foot long cable? I saw the stuff they confiscated from downtown, it's only as thick as a pencil. Jesus, you have no fear! Are you sure they didn't see you run it? Or are you swinging out there from existing stuff, like telco? Or... power lines? You're not that crazy, are you?"
For the first time, Angela realized that Miguel actually believed the cover story that had been manufactured to explain Sapphire. He actually thought she was a crazy girl who strung thin cables between buildings and strapped on a harness, or swung from lines like Spider-Man and rappelled from buildings like a commando... like she'd have the guts for that! (No, you're a crazy girl who flits around on an invisible forcefield powered by glowing rocks that come from who-knows-where and turn you into a sex fiend...)
"A girl has to keep a few secrets to maintain her allure," she said cryptically.
"Whatever," Miguel said. "As long as you don't get caught, and as long as I don't have to be the one to scrape you off the pavement if something goes wrong, I don't care if you use cables or a jetpack or magic pixie dust." He thumbed through more photos.
Then, he stopped. His face relaxed from its squint. Then he started pressing more buttons; the image on the tiny screen seemed to change color and move around and grow...
Finally, he stopped punching buttons. He just stared at the image for a long time.
"What is it?" Angela asked. "Can I see?"
Miguel didn't show it to her; craning her neck until her head grazed his shoulder, she saw what looked like a man. "I don't remember taking that one," she said.
"I shifted it to black and white and zoomed into it," he explained. "It's the last one you took, looks like a couple of guys standing outside a big sedan -- a Town Car, probably." Now she remembered the shot. She hadn't gotten a good look at the man's face -- he'd parked under the burned-out streetlamp, and waited as the guy from the shop crossed the street to meet him.
"I know this guy," Miguel said with a kind of stunned reverence. "Moroshkin's new lieutenant. You have no idea how huge this is."
"More-Oh-Skin?"
"Konstantin Moroshkin. Head of the Russian Mob on the West Coast."
"Is Morrowshkin the guy I..." she almost said 'the guy I saw in the penthouse' but instead said "the guy who lives in that penthouse?"
"That's him."
"Lemme see him." She tugged on his arm, but he resisted, as if what he had wasn't what she wanted to see.
"This isn't Moroshkin here. Moroshkin's a short fat guy." That didn't sound like the man she'd seen in the penthouse; so who was the thin old man? "This here is his new boy wonder -- guy came outta nowhere a couple weeks ago to reopen a burned-out club the Russians bought. It's now *the* hot night spot downtown, and this guy's running it. And obviously, he's running some other things as well."
"Lemme see," Angela whined. Miguel finally turned the camera toward her.
Oh. My. Gawd.
It was Dino Sinclair.