“Missing persons.” Veck stretched in his chair. “Have you noticed how many eighteen-to-twenty-fours have been listed recently? Men, not women.”
“Yup. The mayor’s pulling together a task force.”
“There are plenty of girls as well, but Christ, there’s an epidemic going on.”
Out in the hall, a pair of unis walked by and both he and Veck nodded to the officers. After the footsteps faded, Veck cleared his throat.
“What did Internal Affairs say.” Not a question. And those dark blues stayed locked on the database. “That’s why you’ve come, right.”
“Well, and also to deliver the coffee. Looks like you were taken care of, though.”
; “Reception downstairs.”
Ah, yes. The two Kathys, Brittany spelled Britnae, and Theresa. They probably all thought the guy was a hero.
José cleared his throat. “Turns out the photographer already has some harassment charges pending against him because he’s got a habit of showing up in places he’s not welcome. He and his lawyer just want to make it all go away, because another trespassing-into-a-crime-scene thing is so not going to go well for him. IA has taken statements from everyone, and bottom line, it’s a simple assault on your part—nothing aggravated. Plus the photog says he’ll refuse to cooperate with the DA against you if it comes to that. Likely because he thinks that it’ll help him.”
Now those peepers shifted over. “Thank God.”
“Don’t get too excited.”
Veck’s eyes narrowed—but not in confusion. He knew exactly what the hitch was.
And yet he didn’t ask; he just waited.
José glanced around. At ten o’clock in the evening, the homicide department’s office was empty, although the phones were still ringing, little chirping noises springing up here and there until voice mail ate the callers. Out in the hall, the housekeeping staff was all about the rugsuck, the whirring of multiple vacuums coming from far down the way, by the CSI lab.
So there was no reason not to talk straight.
José shut the main door anyway. Back with Veck, he sat down again and picked up a stray paper clip, drawing a little invisible picture with it on the desk’s fake wood top.
“They asked me what I thought about you.” He tapped his temple with the clip. “Mentally. As in how tight you are.”
“And you said . . .”
José just shrugged and stayed quiet.
“That motherfucker was taking pictures of a corpse. For profit—”
José held up his palm to cut the protest off. “You’ll get no argument there. Fuck it, we all wanted to beat him. The question is, though—if I hadn’t stopped you . . . how far would it have gone, Veck.”
That got another frown from the guy.
And then shit got real quiet. Dead quiet. Well, except for the phones.
“I know you’ve read my file,” Veck said.
“Yup.”
“Yeah, well, I am not my father.” The words were spoken on a low-and-slow. “I didn’t even grow up with the guy. I barely knew him and I’m nothing like him.”
File that one under: Sometimes You Luck Out.
Thomas DelVecchio had a lot of things going for him: He’d gotten straight As in his criminal justice major . . . top of his class at the policy academy. . . . His three years on patrol were spotless. And he was so good-looking he never bought his own coffee.
But he was the son of a monster.