Fatal Flaw Read Free

Olivo’s other employees, his regular customers and tracking down his scattered children. By the time the sun began to rise over the capital city, they had put together a portrait of a man who was well liked by his employees and customers but not particularly close to anyone.
    Of all the people they talked to only Joseph Alvarez had related anything even remotely personal about the intensely private man. From what they could gather, Carl was a workaholic who poured all his time and energy into his restaurant and hadn’t had much left over at the end of the workday for his children, which explained the estrangement.
    “I hate cases like this,” Sam said to Freddie as they rode in her car to HQ. They’d dropped his rattletrap Mustang at a garage for service. Apparently his on-again-off-again girlfriend Elin Svendsen was on again and had complained about the car’s propensity to backfire without warning. Sam had held back a laugh when he told her Elin always thought they were being shot at when it happened. “Two seemingly nice, unassuming people killed for no apparent reason.”
    “Where do we even go from here?”
    “I guess we wait to hear from Lindsey and the crime scene detectives.” When Sam and Freddie left the restaurant, the crime scene officers were still sifting through the freezer where the bodies had been found. “Until then, we’ve got diddly squat.”
    “Lindsey said something about having to wait for the bodies to thaw before she could do the autopsy.”
    “So gross.”
    Since Sam couldn’t argue with that, she didn’t try. “I’ve got something I need to do when we get back to HQ.”
    “You’ll want to see Gardner.”
    Surprised that he knew exactly what she was up to, Sam glanced at him. “You think you know me so well, don’t you?”
    Amused, he shrugged. “Am I wrong?”
    “You’re not wrong.”
    “Want me to go with you?”
    “Thanks, but I’d better go alone. He’s already stonewalled you and Gonzo. I might have a better chance on my own.”
    “Whatever you want, Lieutenant. The whole squad is pulling for a break on your dad’s case. I hope you know that.”
    “I do, and I appreciate the support.” She’d devoted a ridiculous amount of time on the beach in Bora Bora imagining her showdown with Darius Gardner, who’d shot at her and Freddie the week before the wedding when they’d gone to ask him some questions about her father’s unsolved shooting.
    At HQ, they headed to the pit. Sam went into her office to get the Gardner file and noticed a huge stack of mail on her desk. “What the hell?” she muttered. Whatever that was about she’d deal with it after she had her moment with Gardner.
    Standing outside one of the city jail’s interrogation rooms a few minutes later, she studied Darius Gardner through the observation window. At just over six feet tall, Gardner had dark hair and eyes and a muscular build. It would be rather easy, she deduced, for him to overpower a young woman and brutally rape her, which was another of the charges he faced.
    While he waited for Sam in the sterile room, his posture was full of insolence and attitude. He looked a lot less threatening than he had the last time Sam crossed paths with him—the day he’d shot at her and Freddie. Thanks to her partner’s quick thinking, neither of them had been hit.
    Sam reached up to run her fingers over the healing wound on her scalp. After Freddie tackled her to get them out of the bullet’s way, she’d conked her head on a rock in the yard next door. The injury had been worth the outcome—SWAT had stormed Gardner’s house and arrested him for shooting at cops.
    Later that day, the rape victim Gardner had intimidated years earlier came forward to finally press charges. They had him nailed on both counts, but that wasn’t why Sam had spent a big chunk of her honeymoon thinking about him. No, she’d thought about him because there was a good chance he might’ve shot her father more than two years